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. "
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
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I'm guessing that Jackal was revealed to actually be a clone, since when he comes back no worse for wear he's worse than ever, and his wiki entry says his apparent deaths were all just clones of him he uses to trick his enemies into thinking he's dead.
Edited by Arawn999 on Aug 12th 2022 at 2:08:12 AM
I looked it up, and his wiki page
notes that the Jackal who regained his sanity and sacrificed himself
to save Peter and Gwen's clone was indeed a clone himself, and the bomb that killed him was planted and detonated by the real, wholly unrepentant Miles Warren to fake his own death.
Edited by Arawn999 on Aug 12th 2022 at 2:36:16 AM
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To be fair, the same criticism can be made of TV Tropes itself.
The Miles Warren who regained his sanity and sacrificed himself in Amazing Spider-Man #149 was revealed to be a clone in The Osborn Journals.
The Miles Warren who gene-slammed himself into a human-jackal hybrid appears in Amazing Spider-Man #399 and died in Spider-Man: Maximum Clonage Omega #1 claimed to be the original but was revealed to be a clone in Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 4) #22.
The Jackal who assisted the Queen (Adriana Soria) during Spider-Island and was atomized by her sonic scream in Amazing Spider-Man #671 was revealed to be a clone in Amazing Spider-Man #673.
The Jackal who followed Ghost-Spider to Earth-65 and was stranded there indicated himself to be a clone, but he's admitted he's often unaware of which is the original and which is the clone.
Edited by Arawn999 on Aug 12th 2022 at 3:03:56 AM
I've been watching Only Murders in the Building and I saw on the YMMV page for the show that Jan had been listed. After some searching, I found the discussion
.
I wanted to contest the example, particularly in light of the second season.
I'd kind of quibble to begin with in terms of how the suggestion waves away Jan's (admittedly very ambiguous) possible genuine affection for Charles and past victims. Also, as a side note, AFAIK, it's still kind of ambiguous whether Jan left the warning note for herself even though she definitely stabbed herself.
More importantly though, there's a real issue of how seriously Jan is treated, due to the show being a comedy.
Although Jan's crimes are definitely treated fairly seriously, Jan isn't really treated super-seriously after her crimes have been exposed.
In the second season, we find out that Charles has continued to date her - it started with him Consulting a Convicted Killer but graduated to "dates" at the prison and phone sex. Their interactions are humorous, as is Charles' inability to break up with her (granted, in big part because of fear).
Part of the humor is in how Jan cannot register that her attempting to kill Charles / everyone in the building should be a reason for their relationship to end, since they have a real connection.
When the other characters find out about it, it goes from humor (Oliver ribbing Charles about it) to seriousness (Mabel reminding Charles that Jan murdered her friend and walking away in anger) to humor again (Oliver commenting how Mabel exhibits this behavior every third or fourth episode).
Also played for humor is how Charles eventually uses his career-long body double, Sazz (played by Jane Lynch) to break-up with Jan, and Sazz ends up playing along after Jan is arroused by intimiate details that Charles included in the break-up note. This relates to a Running Joke in and out of universe about how Sazz takes over for Charles, including in his dating life (this is a joking Actor Allusion to Anne Heche leaving Steve Martin for Ellen Degeneres).
Sorry for the length. But tl; dr, having a humorous plotline where a character continues to date the serial killer is pretty good evidence of the work not treating that serial killer completely seriously.
Edited by Hodor2 on Aug 12th 2022 at 3:08:05 AM
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Well, if she does anything heinous in the last two episodes, then I might withdraw the objection. But for the same reason, her being listed as a complete monster is at best premature.
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I've never been sure how clones are considered. Like for instance, IIRC there was one "model" of Ultron that turned good.
Edited by Hodor2 on Aug 12th 2022 at 3:12:41 AM
@Hodor Hi, the thread has a rule about not discussing works until two weeks after their release to avoid spoilers. I'm not familiar with the series but if there's info in your post that pertains to episodes released less than two weeks ago, please remove them
Also with Arawn's post (and the thorough citations of specific comics) I'm leaning yes to Jackal now.
Edited by papyru30 on Aug 12th 2022 at 4:16:22 AM
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I sent a scraggle a recommendation for one more. Haven't heard what he said on that guy yet.
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Tbf Ultron's "kids" becoming good is like a recurring thing. And also kinda demonstrates his superiority to humanity thing and "bringing order to stuff" is him being full of it.
Edited by miraculous on Aug 12th 2022 at 3:15:24 AM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Chriiist, I hate comic book continuity...I'll give Jackal a tentative yes, given any appearance where he seems to have redeeming traits can be explained away.
Mir recommended me Swarm, whose rapsheet apparently includes "kill all of humanity with bees," but I may not get to him for a while. But after the recent Spidey guys I have, shocker, a Marvel of my own to knock off.
This dude debuted as the Big Bad of the Marvel Boy miniseries in 2000, but he later showed up in the crossover Original Sin as a major villain there (plus an appearance or two in Iron Man Annual).
What has Dr. Midas/Cosmic Man done?
A multitrillionaire Mad Scientist and Corrupt Corporate Executive rolled in one, Midas is the head of the Midas Foundation, a sinister conglomerate that dabbles its hands in vivisection, experimentation, and Superhuman Trafficking of all kinds. Poor Noh-Varr of the Kree almost experiences this when Midas shoots down his ship, killing everyone else aboard, and tries to have Noh-Varr butchered to sell his Kree parts to interested buyers. Noh-Varr escapes this lunatic, but it's later on we get to another nasty dimension of Midas; his relationship with his daughter, whom he's christened Oubliette.
Midas married and impregnated a woman just to conceive a daughter he could mold in his image, and as soon as his wife was pregnant Midas began experimenting on her to accedrate the fetus’ growth, non-stop, until her entire body was a hotbed of toxins. Her agony only ended when Midas literally ripped baby Oubliette from her womb. Midas then trained his daughter “to kill everything that ever lived,” raising her as an emotionless killer. He also subjects her to psychologically warping emotional abuse, teaching her to perceive a small scar on her cheek as a grotesque face physical deformation, forcing her to wear a mask for years.
Midas’ goal is to get access to Reed Richards’ Cosmic Ray Engine Chamber, which would bathe him in sheer cosmic radiation. Midas achieves this goal toward the end of Marvel Boy, massacring a room full of his own men as a testdrive and rechristening himself “Cosmic Man.” Seeing the multiverse in its infinitude and declaring all life but himself “obsolete,” Midas decides to go astray from reality to reality, “raping world after world after world.” Midas even orders his own daughter murdered alongside Noh-Varr when she finally relents against his abuse. Midas is defeated, banished to the Dark Dimension where he's surrounded by Mindless Ones…
…well, come Original Sin, the writers take advantage of the fact we don't technically see him killed, and they bring him back, now with a bunch of Mindless Ones as his minions. Here he teams up with Orb in another attempt at omnipotence, this time by robbing the powers of the now-deceased Uatu the Watcher. Returning to Earth briefly, Midas kills everyone on a fishing boat–literally turning the captain into gold–and takes the ship to a hidden rocket he promptly flies to the moon, where he gluts himself on Uatu’s power. It's here, though, that Nick Fury kills him for good by using Uatu’s eye to overwhelm Midas with all the power and knowledge Uatu has at once, which, naturally, causes Midas to blow the hell up.
Any mitigating factors?
Nope. Midas’ relationship with his daughter Oubliette is beyond toxic and abusive and there's no real attempt to frame it as anything but, to the point where Midas decides Offing the Offspring is the only decision. Confusingly they're back together in Original Sin, but it's not like he has anything more in the way of love or attachment to her there, and after she betrays him all over again he seems to just forget about her. It's a somewhat inconsistent relationship but never one that comes close to being redeeming.
Conclusion?
An easy keeper, I think.
Midas, Jackal
I know the HS for Criminal Minds is fucking ruthless but do I have to apply that to it's spin-off series Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders? I may have a keeper from there but I just need to double check the episode.
What's wrong D-16? Rise up!

I call the new Alone in the Dark remake. Let's hope it's better than the 2008 reboot.
Edited by therealjackieboy on Aug 12th 2022 at 1:50:19 AM
It's Spooky Month!