Complete Monster Cleanup

hammerhead expansion

Also yes I feel a general ankne and manga folder is better for now.

Cut the Star Trek guy. I was always iffy about him going up.

agree

Somebody posted this in Webcomic.The Draw Play

• Complete Monster: In-Universe, Dan Snyder is depicted as such. Dave sent him off to hell in his final appearance with the "Fuck Dan Snyder" week for being such a vile human being.

This is misuse, right? There's no In-Universe equivalent for this trope? The front page already spells it out:

Characters calling out other characters for their crimes In-Universe is You Monster!.

Absolutely. Also Complete Monster is a YMMV trope, and that person put it on the main page. Nevermind the fact that I seriously doubt they did an effort post.

...I mean, you do put In-Universe YMMV concepts on the main page. That's actually what you're supposed to do. No rules were broken except for the issue with CM not allowing in-universe examples.

About that. I’ve always wondered if a character writes a Story Within a Story that gets approved by the CM thread in story, would we be able to put that on the main trope page?

ah, Ok, that makes sense

Edited by LarryT on Nov 8th 2023 at 3:38:47 AM

Still YMMV, because it's a real life audience reaction, not the reaction of the In-Universe characters

Edited by Snowy66 on Nov 8th 2023 at 3:38:04 AM

43110: Thank you very much for your support. Yes, Ma-Ma is also a very good example and while not particularly unfamiliar with Vinland Saga, Sewyn also sounds like a good example. Honestly, from everything I'm hearing, there's nothing that seems to suggest that B'Vat's revenge for his son is due to his personal pride. As with the other character avenging his brother that you found on the wiki. So here, according to all the information, B'Vat sincerely took revenge for his son. Again, there is nothing like Braunschweig here, where it is clear that he is taking revenge for his pride and not for his nephew.

Forgo Light:Thank you very much for the answer. Sorry, but I personally still support the cut. The fact that there is no direct indication that he cares for his son does not automatically mean that he does not care. He destroyed an entire family for his son and there is nothing to suggest that he did it out of honor. Lastly, could you please also answer Lighty's question about where the backstory even came from? From what source?

Okay, here's another cut candidate I've been wanting to suggest for a while. And unlike the previous ones, here I am firmly convinced that he needs to leave. From Sniper Elite 3.

Sorry for the length, but I feel like it needs to be completely stripped down to clear things up and fully explain why the candidate doesn't even come close to the trope.

• General Franz Vahlen only cares about seeing his top-secret weapons project, Project Seuche ("Plague"), through. To achieve what he wants in the smallest possible amount of time, Vahlen has his men work around the clock, and he brutally executes anyone who makes even a slight complaint. According to some officers in both the Italian and German forces, he has an agenda of eventually overthrowing Hitler, Rommel and even the German High Command once the tide of war turns in Germany's favor. Worse, he has Allied prisoners mercilessly executed for simply finding out about Project Seuche. Several German and Italian soldiers and officers are disgusted by his actions and motivations, with several even trying to snitch on and betray him to Rommel throughout the campaign.

The guy has no redeeming qualities and he probably has the personality of a CM. Problem? Disgusting. Just read the entry. See something REALLY scary? Personally, I don't. Valen is a very standard Nazi, his mistreatment of both his subordinates and captured allies is unpleasant, but it just makes him a jerk and a bad boss. His threat to two of his subordinates results in them killing themselves, but this is accidental and unintentional on Valen's part. The argument for him was that he was conducting some kind of experiments and was a supporter of poison gas during the First World War. Firstly, he is just a supporter of poison gas and this is again completely behind the scenes. What about his "experiments" ....... uh, there aren't any. Demon Duckof Doom was the one who mentioned them, but with all due respect, it's not clear where he got them from? There aren't even close to them in the game. There isn't any not even a mention, not even a spirit. Oh, and let me mention that even his poor treatment of his subordinates and captured allies is actually mentioned only in general in the notes? This is not in the plot itself, not to mention the fact that the story as a whole does not focus On this.

Rmpdc, who suggested Valen, also noted that Valen does not have any experiments on people. In his opinion, he stood out solely because of his cruelty to allied prisoners of war and to his own soldiers. Yes, this is terrible, but this is very little, there is nowhere near such insane cruelty as Krogan (who executed his minions left and right, sacrificing dozens of them just to get the artifact he needs, kills if they are not strong enough compared to others),Kurt Dekker (forcing his soldiers to kill each other or themselves, and his body count is much, MUCH higher than Valen ever had) or Gothmog (who allowed hundreds of his soldiers to be crushed). Valen has nothing even close to this. And is it worth mentioning that Kurt Dekker, Krogan and Gothmog have all this on screen?

The fact that even other Nazi commanders were against him and tried to report him to command simply makes his personality much more like the CM, rather than making his actions worse. As a result, we have, albeit a hated jerkass, who is treated as a CM in the game itself, but who is very, very standard, and all of his attributed actions are either behind the scenes, or there are none at all, or too few for him to even pass the basic standard. In the game itself, Karl simply creates sabotage and never normally encounters Valen’s atrocities (except for two corpses of soldiers killed because of his threats). He just reads in notes from other Nazis how obnoxious and a complete asshole he is. All. And he has great resources. Already in a separate game he should have been cut out, but he is in the whole series, so let's compare him with other villains, whether they are KM or not.

Dr. Wolf from part 2. He betrayed Germany, a treacherous snake, ordered the death of his colleague who tried to flee to the Allies, allows the Russians to execute their soldiers and tries to launch a V-2 on London in order to completely destroy it. He has much fewer resources than Valen and is much worse than him.

General mother Heinz his Böhm from Sniper Elite 4. That's who is REALLY completely terrible.Regularly carries out massacres, has a very large number of deaths on his hands, lures a huge number of rebels and kills almost all of them, sacrifices or abandons his soldiers and trusted commanders to death, drives Sofia to despair and tries to force Karl to watch her torture in order to drive him to despair and kill him. And his ultimate plan is to destroy the entire huge Allied fleet with General Eisenhower at its head. If Valen had a slim chance of remaining, Böhm completely and masterfully crushed them. They both have almost the same resources and Boehm is worse than Valen in everything. Boehm takes every unpleasant trait of Valen to a monstrous level. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the perfect example of an obnoxious and hateful jerk, the villain of Hate Sink from Valen and CM in all his beauty and grandeur from General Heinz Böhm. As we can see, there is a BIG difference between them.

Obergruppenführer Abelard Möller from part 5. Wipes out the entire population of an entire city, kills many members of the French Resistance, fires his V2 on his troops on the front lines as a test, and plans a large-scale attack on the US mainland that will obviously kill many civilians.

As we can see, all the other major villains are simply much, much, MUCH worse than Valen ever was. He is surpassed by a scientist who has much fewer resources and is very much demolished by Boehm, who is equal in resources to him. being a bad boss is nothing new for Valen and Böhm and Möller perhaps go even further. Gidler is in a different lineage, and even so he has much more resources, but when Valen himself is standard, then there are as many as 3 more! other main villains are superior to him in everything? It's not even funny.

This is similar to Loptr and Bradford Buzzard, but even they were damn terrible. Loptr commits genocide and is behind Balder's evil, while Bradford is responsible for the biggest tragedies of Scrooge's family, tries to kill everyone associated with the adventure, including his entire organization, and also has some very unpleasant personal cruelty.The problem is not so much that they are not disgusting enough, but their resources. As Lighty said, if Loptr were just the immortal Matthew Hopkins, he would calmly remain. Not having such powerful and such a number of artifacts, or if he had gone even further, then I think Bradford passed the classification. Valen doesn’t even have this, and if Loptr and Bradford are not C Ms, then what can we say about someone who doesn’t even scratch the basic standard on his own?

Solid cut Valena. I don’t see a shred of argument here that could at least give Valen a chance to stay. In a separate game, he would not have passed the classification even close, and with 3 powerful competitors, completely knocking him out of the trope? Don't get me wrong, Valen is terrible and a complete asshole. He has the personality of a CM and the very history of treating him that way. But he's just doing practically nothing, with huge resources, other than just being a complete jerk, even for Germany. No mass murder, no torture, human experimentation, terrible slavery or anything else. And his most unpleasant crimes are behind the scenes and are not given adequate attention. Cut out.

Edited by Ghal-Sur on Nov 8th 2023 at 11:05:00 AM

If he's really not standing out by a far mile compared to other Nazis, then cut that guy unless someone else has a good argument.

Interesting you mentioned Loptr lol. Would be a solid keep if he didn't run into the single most batshit insane villain I saw in a video game.

Edited by Mr-ex777 on Nov 9th 2023 at 3:28:13 AM

Cut Valen, yeah.

Cut Vale and honestly cut the star trwk dude too

Cut Valen

What game is Valen from?

Asking this here before it becomes an issue elsewhere...

Complete Monster is already a No Real Life Examples, Please! trope, with some guidance to say that Historical Domain Character portrayals are allowed as long as we're clearly troping the fictionalised version, not the real person.

Do we already have some sort of No Recent Examples, Please! limit on Historical Domain Character cases? I can't see an obvious note of it. If not, should we?

I'm conscious that in the last couple of years we've had docudramas on a lot of relatively recent cases. I've just written up the works page for Des (2020) (about Dennis Nilsen), for example, one of 12+ recent ITV miniseries about the UK's most notorious and horrible 20th century crimes, and a new miniseries about Jimmy Savile has been release on another channel.

Things like these are dramatized, but trying to stay very true to life. Some of the killers and abusers are still alive in jail. Listing their docudrama versions as CMs feels problematic.

With that in mind, it feels like putting a NREP rule on CM for true-to-life dramatizations of real life crimes might be a wise move. Whether that runs from the date of the crime or the release date of the dramatization would be up for discussion, but I'd suggest a few decades either way.

Any thoughts?

Uh in pretty sure docudramas have always been treated as fiction by the site. (in fact thats in the rules) Since the actors aren't actually the real people involved in that case. Your thinking of documentaries.

That Said. I normally don't touch ones with criminals who aren't like dead or in prison for at least a few decades. So maybe a a time limit of like five-10 years after imprisonment or death. Unless it's really fictionalised. As for example Diogenes Club Charles Manson was created as an Omnicidal Maniac cult leader while he was still alive and uh is pretty far from his real life version

Also to clarify Denis wouldnt count in that series as a CM anyway. He cares for his dog.

Edited by miraculous on Nov 8th 2023 at 3:45:11 AM

Definitely thinking of docudramas - where we have an actor playing a real person in a close-to-life scenario. Which are in-scope for CM by default, unless there's a NREP exception.

And yes, Nilsen cared for his dog. But if someone raises a CM post for a factually accurate portrayal of Fred West, Jeffrey Dahmer or some other notorious and relatively recent killer, should that be a valid candidate?

It feels a little weird for one trope to not be able to trope docudramas when other tropes just trope the work as if it were fictional. It feels similar to the “taste” rule we got rid of cause it’s odd for this one thing to be the exception.

It also feels like a hard line to draw - there are plenty of works with a Historical Domain Character that aren’t necessarily based on real life. We trope those fine on CM as well, so I don’t know why docudramas would be excepted

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Nov 8th 2023 at 6:51:11 AM

Maybe specifiy it's just the protrayl in the show. If it's what their going for. It's what there going for.

Like "X is protrayed by this work as..."

Tbh Im kinda surprised we don't do that more.

Edit:Yeah. It would be weird to have an exwpxrion that no other trope has. I feel it should instead be clarifying it's how the work portrays it in the examples.

Edited by miraculous on Nov 8th 2023 at 3:51:57 AM

That's partly why I was thinking NREP would be an option instead of any wider rule. But curious as to views.

Tbh I don’t really know why that would be needed too - it’s a trope entry for the work, it’s safe to say it’s referring to how something is portrayed in the work itself by default. It’s a safe assumption that someone seeing a CM entry for someone who happened to exist isn’t necessarily calling the real person a CM

Like, that’s the entire point of the distinction. None of the entries are actually referring to the real person, they’re referring to the portrayal. That should be self-explanatory from the way the site works.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Nov 8th 2023 at 6:54:41 AM

I was just about to inquire about the No Real Life Examples rule in relation to Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on real events.

Yes, but it’s not a real-life example, it’s a fictional portrayal even if it’s based on real-life

Yeah things like Reckoning has several moments that were created solely for the miniseries for instance.

If you don't mind me cutting in to begin a completely different discussion, Star Wars. Specifically, the KOTOR prequel comic book. There are four standing CMs for it, but for the purposes of my question, only one is relevant: Demagol.

Now, I understand that Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse is a theme of the comic. After all, it makes sure to display characters who went through the same things the villains did and didn't wind up becoming nearly as bad. But looking at Demagol's Freudian Excuse entry, it says that being experimented on by the Iskalloni made him incapable of empathy.

What I need to know is, is that literal? Is Demagol medically incapable of feeling empathy? And would that qualify as an agency concern if he was?