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
So it's been 2 weeks since Fear FM
Season 2 ended.
So the villain this time is the wicked Lal Chudail, a demonic sorceress who kidnaps children and feasts on their organs. Sounds like an easy keep right? Well, here's the thing. She was once a sorceress named Rudra Devi who was scarred into becoming the Lal Chudail thanks to the works of the Dakin. Seeking to return herself back to what she once was, Devi finds that children's organs are the key, and has no choice. At one point, as she takes a child's organs in her cave and caresses the child's face, feeling sorry for what she has to do to him... despite the fact that we always see her as a twisted sadist who loves causing pain to others.
So I really don't know. On one hand, she's a sadist with child murders to her name, but on the other, that whole caressing of the child scene and the story's unclear tone on if we're supposed to feel bad for her or not makes it too confusing to really EP her. Plus she had a hell of a life before her summoning of the Dakin, so there's that as well. Plus it's implied she might return, so I don't really feel like risking it.
That said, Prakash's father will need an expansion. He summoned the Dakin in the previous story, which returns and corrupts Rudra Devi into the Lal Chudail, thus kickstarting the plot to Season 2. So even in death his actions continue to have consequences.
- Prakash's father is the instigator for everything that happens in the series. A pedophile primary school teacher who would frequently molest his students, he was found out by his wife and banished from his town. Frequenting multiple slums for victims, he was caught raping a little boy and beaten to a pulp. Blaming his ex-wife for ruining his life, he sought out sorceress Rudra Devi to awaken the Dakin to murder his ex-wife, gleefully hanging himself to complete the summoning. Even after his death, the Dakin, still loose, turns Rudra into the Lal Chudail, which led to her killing children and countless others to return herself back to normal.
Edited by therealjackieboy on Feb 2nd 2020 at 8:31:12 AM
It's Spooky Month!Could Unwitting Instigator of Doom go around "turns Rudra into the Lal Chudail..."? Also, could the Dakin himself (itself?) count?
1. The Dakin's a she.
2. The Dakin is Made of Evil (as confirmed by Word of God)
3. That trope works.
Edited by therealjackieboy on Feb 2nd 2020 at 8:34:06 AM
It's Spooky Month!ACW: For Hansel and Gretel, maybe Siblings in Crime would work better than Brother–Sister Team?
I tried doing a good writeup for Monkey Fist, but the writing juices just aren't flowing. If anyone else wants to take care of it, it's fine by me. If not, I'll do it later.
Check out my current fanfiction project.Not many pothole suggestions this time. Just And Your Little Dog, Too! at "those close to them" for Fouchet and Lack of Empathy at "Aido is indifferent" for, well, Aido.
Otto Rottermeyer from the Quincy, M.E. episode "Stolen Tears" (Season Seven, Episode 18)
The Show: To quote This Very Wiki:
The show began as an entry on The NBC Mystery Movie before being shifted into a full-fledged series in its own right, and enjoyed a lengthy run (1976-1983). The basic formula had Quincy working on a corpse whose death had been ruled an accident or suicide. In each episode he would find something strange in the autopsy which would lead him to suspect murder. Quincy would then start sleuthing, inevitably picking up on clues the police missed. He'd eventually find enough evidence to force the always-clueless cops to re-classify the death as a homicide, at which point Quincy would expose the identity of the killer.
During his time solving suspicious suicides and uncovering evildoers, Quincy was assisted by loyal Lab Rat Sam Fujiyama (Robert Ito) and was constantly at odds with both Lt. Monahan (Gary Walberg), who resented Quincy's meddling, and Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin), who resented all the overtime hours Quincy and Sam racked up.
Who They Are: A proud Nazi, Otto was a high-ranking official at Auschwitz, where he was given the nickname "Der Teufel" ("The Devil") because his treatment of the camp's prisoners was "worse than Hell." Two inmates, Isaac Kroviak and Hyam Sigerski, tried to use Hyam's family's valuables to bribe Otto into smuggling them and their families out of Auschwitz. Otto took the valuables, and then made Isaac and Hyam (who had several of his teeth knocked out) watch as he raped both of their wives before killing them, along with every other member of the Kroviak and Sigerski families.
Isaac and Hyam managed to survive the Holocaust, and moved to America, where the latter opened a Holocaust Museum (which is full of everything from implements of torture to lampshades made from human skin) in California. The two believed that Otto had at some point died of Typhus, when in reality he had also had immigrated to America, where he lived as a Los Angeles apartment manager under the assumed name Charlie Wilson.
What They Do: While out for a walk, Isaac Kroviac stops to feed some pigeons, and, by sheer coincidence, spots Otto. After paying a young boy to bring a message ("Der Teufel, He Lives") to his friend Hyam Sigerski, Isaac tries to follow Otto, who, having noticed and recognized his stalker, uses a hijacked car to run over Isaac. Isaac's body is examined by Quincy and Sam, who are visited by Hyam. Hyam shows Isaac's note to Quincy, and tearfully recounts his and Isaac's experiences with "Der Teufel" in Auschwitz. Along with Isaac's death and Otto's return, Hyam is also dealing with a wealthy Holocaust denier named Cornelius Sumner, who is the head of a group called "The Committee for Purity and Truth." Sumner sues Hyam after Hyam insults him on the air by calling him a bigoted, hate-mongering liar during an interview with a radio host named Doug Wiley.
Meanwhile, Otto finds Leopold Ackerman, a tenant and the owner of the car that he used to kill Isaac, chloroforms and murders him, and makes it look like he committed suicide, which fools everyone except for Quincy and Hyam. Since Ackerman happened to be Jewish, Otto apparently had a little fun by using a gas oven to kill Leopold. Hyam goes to talk to "Charlie Wilson" and ends up being chloroformed by a madly grinning Otto. Quincy gets a call from one of the missing Hyam's worried friends, and afterward manages to piece together that "Charlie Wilson" is really Otto Rottermeyer. Otto is arrested just as he is about to kill a bound and gagged Hyam.
To the surprise of everyone, Otto volunteers to testify at the Sumner trial on behalf of Hyam. Otto is not bargaining for a deal and is not remorseful, though, he merely wants to openly brag about his crimes, and call out wannabes like Sumner:
- Hyam's Lawyer: Is there any truth to Mr. Sumner's contention that there were no mass slayings of the Jews?
Otto: None at all. I helped to kill thousands myself. My only regret is that we failed. That, uh, so many survived. Even then, men like Sumner got their way. They wanted to erase every trace of the exterminations. I fought with them. I thought we should shout it to the world. Humph! Men like Sumner, they're worse than the Jews! They tried to rewrite history! Take away what we did! The Final Solution was the most courageous act in modern history. Nothing will change that.
Later:
- Otto (to Sumner): Anyone calls you a liar, even a Jew, he is speaking the truth. You tried to cheat us of our glory, hmm? You fool.
Sumner: You don't even know what it is you've done!
Otto: I've ensured our movement's place in the history books!
Sumner: And thanks to you, that's exactly where it'll remain!
The slander trial is found in favor of Hyam, and the episode ends with one of Sumner's followers, who had vandalized Hyam's museum with a swastika, washing the swastika away after denouncing Sumner.
Heinousness: While the series (especially the later "socially conscious" episodes) did tackle dark subject matter like rape and familicide every now and then, it, for the most part, verged on being a Cozy Mystery show, with the villains usually being one or two-off crime of passion or financially-motivated murderers. So, obviously, a Nazi war criminal whose atrocities include even rape definitely sticks out.
We don't get any flashbacks to Otto's activities during the war, but we do meet two survivors of his crimes, one of whom he kills to try and cover up said crimes, framing another Jewish man for the murder before killing him too, by sticking his head in a gas oven and leaving him there to suffocate as a probable in-joke to the Holocaust. He tries to kill Hyam too, and outright states that his only regret in life is that they failed to wipe out all of the Jews.
While Sumner and his ilk were obviously scumbags, they were clearly dwarfed by Otto.
Mitigating Factors: He only testified on Hyam's behalf so that he could finally openly brag about his role in the Holocaust, and because his pride was wounded by a poser like Sumner having the audacity to claim that "the most courageous act in modern history" never happened.
Busy at my sister's place and I will be for some time, but I do have free time for a candidate from a recent, nifty little fantasy novel I read.
What's the setting?
Lyrec by Gregory Frost was a little book released in 1984 telling the tale of its title character and his steadfast companion Borregad. The two of them are Vitriolic Best Buds despite their differences in temperament and ideology, and are the last survivors of a godlike race of beings that was totally annihilated. Lyrec and Borregad use devices called crexes that allow them to hop between parallel universes, adopting new identities in each, and in the latest, Lyrec has taken the form of a handsome adventurer and Borregad his alcoholic talking cat. Their adversary, the one responsible for the destruction of their world, is Miradomon.
Who is Miradomon? What has he done?
A High Fantasy answer to Nyarlathotep, Miradomon is one of the few other remaining survivors of the cataclysm that annihilated his, Lyrec and Borregad's entire race. Mostly because he's the one who engineered said cataclysm. Miradomon, always the scheming and ambitious sort, discovered a way to increase his own power by harvesting the death energy of others. Miradomon subsequently annihilated his entire homeworld, empowering himself with the death of his entire race before beginning to come astride parallel universes to ruin all in his wake.
Miradomon initially starts with overcharging the suns of populated worlds and cooking entire sapient races to death to take their life energy, but Miradomon found out that he could harness more death energy if he prolonged the destruction of the worlds he invaded. Through a slew of countless dead worlds, Miradomon's technique has only grown more refined, and slowly he's adopted a new habit; murdering the gods of a world to replace them, then using his new guise to infest mortal races with madness and violence and "pare them against each other by degrees." Miradomon orchestrates genocides from the inside-out, butchering continents worth of people at a time and making populations tear each other into unrecognizable abattoirs of what they've once been while Miradomon finishes up what's left with apocalyptic disasters and armies of unspeakable monsters. All the trillions of deaths he's orchestrated have empowered him beyond measure and he's not intending to stop until every parallel universe in a near-infinity of them has been annihilated, and replaced with a nightmarish hellscape of chaos in his own image.
In the latest world Lyrec and Borregad follow Miradomon to, Miradomon has already taken to his usual habits. Assuming corporeal form in the world and very soon after murdering a priest as the first thing he does on the worlds, Miradomon butchers the gods of the world and impersonates Chagri, the local god of war, to manipulate the religious temples of the region. Miradomon has a village of Kobach (magicians/witches) massacred by one of the fanatical priests in his pocket, leading to hundreds killed and not even the infants spared. Miradomon even slaughters the king of the country Secumelan and his entire entourage, kidnapping his fourteen-year-old daughter in order to capture the soul of Lyrec's beloved—Alystroya, the only other survivor of his homeworld's destruction.
Miradomon takes over Secumelan by possessing the body of its dead king's eight-year-old son—keeping the boy aware and helpless in his own body—and uses him to sew further chaos. Miradomon tries to have a gigantic city massacred through Tynec's authority, gleefully musing on how he'll set up the homeless and the destitute of the city as human barricades to soak up the slaughter first. When Lyrec finally finds him, Miradomon murders Tynec's loyal envoy Chagral and frames Lyrec for it, intending to have him executed.
Miradomon comes closer and closer to his goal of throwing the rest of the world into a series of country-wide wars while causing more and more agony. At one point, Miradomon orders a priest he's manipulated as Chagri to flay a child alive in his service. To pass the time, Miradomon visits the other side of the planet, pits two entire nations against each other and make them massacre each other to fuel himself off millions of deaths, and returns to the priest like he's just returning from dry cleaning. When he learns the priest has chafed under his order, Miradomon agonizingly kills the man. The "flaying alive" thing comes back later: Miradomon stops to visit the bloodthirsty pedophile tyrant, Ladomirus, that he's been using as a pawn, and slowly skins him alive before hanging his skin to flap atop his castle as a warning to those who would further defy or fail him.
In the final battle with his nemesis, as the planet verges on tearing itself apart, Miradomon tells he's Lyrec he's destroyed Alystroya to crush his hope, then reveals her alive purely to fuck with Lyrec further before he destroys them both. Miradomon preys on Lyrec's insistence on Never Hurt an Innocent by forcing him into battle with a woman he's tricked and horribly electrocuting Lyrec every time he parries instead of attacks. Miradomon finally reveals he's done with Lyrec's interference and that he's going to arrange it so that Lyrec is the mantlepiece of And I Must Scream on the universe of chaos he'll create
Thankfully, after a pitched battle, Lyrec and Alystroya finally manage to expose Miradomon's horrible, rotting true form with the help of the Kobachs. Realizing his jig is up, Miradomon pleads for all of a few seconds before Lyrec uses his crex to annihilate his skull, destroying Miradomon forever.
Any mitigating factors?
None as far as the eye can see. Miradomon is only too gleeful to be evil of his own volition, and his motivation is as simple as simple gets: the ambition for godlike power. With that in mind, Miradomon amasses a body count of possibly billions of universes, and spends every second he's on-page finding so many new ways to Kick the Dog it becomes a joy to count the ever-growing number of atrocities after a point. He's one of the most wicked bastards I've ever read in a fantasy novel.
Conclusion?
Keeper, easily.
Edited by Scraggle on Feb 2nd 2020 at 12:42:51 PM
Yes to the above two.
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)Btw I found the interesting A Fête Worse than Death. I'm sure their are examples it'll work for.
Edited by miraculous on Feb 2nd 2020 at 12:26:43 PM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Yeah, I asked Scraggle about that. The first is for the TV page; the second is for Other Media (Multimedia), since he actually commits his worst crimes in the comic and novel.