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
Here's another EC comics entry. And while it doesn't deal with mass murder or the like, the evil in this is far more realistic and brutal than a lot of cheesy comic tales. Fair warning before proceeding: this story deals with Sexual assault and rape, and while the word is never said in the story, the act is explictly implied. So just a trigger warning for what's to come.
For the sake of the twist, i'll withhold the villain's name until the end. This story is Shock Suspen Stories #16, A Kind of Justice.
The Culprit
The story begins with a frightened, traumatized sixteen year old girl, Shirley Hansen, sobbing in the corner of a dilapitated shack, under the shadow of an imposing man who has taken her to the shack to sexually assault her. He says, "You tell anyone...I'll Kill you!" and storms off into the night.
The poor girl stumbles back home, too traumatized and ashamed to tell anyone of the act, with the rapists' words reverberating in her mind. Her parents frantically try to get an explanation out of her, with her mom being soothing and patient and her dad being a hardass who yells about how she needs to tell him right now(of course). When Shirley breaks out what happened, Mr. Hansen flies into a rage and vows to pound the life out of the scum who did it.
He then drags his daughter to the police station, where she speaks with Sherrif Paul Judson and his deputy Russ Ford. Shirley is still too shaken up to give any name, but the Sheriff is patient and takes his Deputy to look for any suspicious characters.
At the local bar, they see a suspicious looking young man they've never seen in town before. The man's name is Eddie Nichols, and he claims he's never seen any girls and just came to town looking for a job. But that isn't enough to sway the officers, and they escort him out of the bar for questioning. However, several patrons were watching the scene, realizing they have daughters of their own and this man could've got near them.
At the station, the officers grill Nichols for two hours, but he doesn't confess to anything. Then they start to hear commotion outside, and Eddie begs the policemen to keep him in the station. Judson confronts the mob gathering outside and tells them they have no proof the man is guilty. The next day, Mr. Hansen takes his daughter to the station along with the mob so she can point out if Eddie's guilty.
As they gather outside, Judson leaves to calm them down while Ford is left to deal with Eddie. The sadistic deputy starts beating the poor man, furiously yelling for him to confess. Judson runs in and calls the rabid cop off, before speaking more gently to the suspect. He states that he wants to protect Eddie from the mob, but the only way he can do that is if Eddie signs a confession notice that'll allow him safe passage to the local jail. Judson reassures him he'll back the young man up.
In the hall, his demeanor changes. He smiles at his deputy, praising their "Good Cop,Bad Cop" routine("It always works out, don't it Sheriff!? Next time you'll be the villain...and I'll be the sucker's friend!"). Judson than greets the mob outside and tells them he has a full confession from Eddie Nichols. The officers stand by smiling as the vengeance-crazed mob storms the station. Judson, good sheriff he is, takes poor Shirley home while the carnage is going down. He doesn't hear the screams of hatred as the mob bears down on Eddie. He doesn't screaming in terror as the mob comes to viciously beat him to death for a crime he didn't commit. He doesn't hear the young man's bones crack, as a vengeful mob beats him to death.
All he hears is the guilty sobs of Shirley Hansen next to him, and he says, "You were smart not to talk, Shirley! Remember...You tell anybody, and i'll kill you,". Just like he did in the dark shack a few days earlier.
Heinousness
This man did not kill anyone like a lot of other EC villains, at least not directly. What he did was rape a 16 year old girl, threaten to kill her if she spoke out, used his position as sheriff to frame an innocent man, pretended to be the man's friend before allowing a crazed mob to beat him to death, and repeat his threat to the girl he supposedly cared for.
He has an image of a "good cop" who cares for the townsfolk and even shows compassion to the wrongfully accused man. It's all a lie. Judson pretends to be Eddie's friend while sowing the seeds of fury in a bunch of paranoid people, allows his deputy to brutalize him, and ultimately leaves him to die for the vile crime he committed.
Judson is a scumbag to the core, and unlike a lot of other EC characters, even Dr. Perdo, he's evil in a realistic fashion that is never played for campy dark comedy and gets off scot-free for his crimes. Between all the mad scientists, homicidal spouses, vampires, zombies, and mutants, I genuinely don't think you can get much worse than a lying rapist police officer who destroys a girl's innocence and goads an entire town to murder to save his loathsome hide.
Verdict
Paul Judson is an example of just how dark and realistically brutal EC could get, and for that I think he's a special kind of monster.
Have to admit I'm iffy on this one, leaning Yes but not fully sure. A Murder by Inaction caused by him framing someone else and a rape to a minor.
...
There's a candidate that I'd like to propose, but the band (Marduk) that made the songs have shown some pretty sketchy views in the past and have been the subject of a lot of controversy. While the songs in question don't come off as propaganda in and of themselves (they're songs about Vlad the Impaler, and there is a mention of "the coloured ones", but aside from that, the lyrics take kind of a disinterested view), I'm still wondering if it would be okay to propose him given their sketchiness. I know that The Turner Diaries has been rejected for being blatant racist propaganda (and on a sidenote, that unapproved writeup was fucking terrible), but we've also got Not Important and a number of H.P. Lovecraft antagonists, if you wanna talk about sketchy creators whose bigotry might show in their works.
Also, has anyone heard back from Pure about Brad?
Edited by Stellarvore on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:40:18 PM
No to the EC Comics one. That's despicable and rape seems a unique crime, but it's still too little.
Anyway, I have a candidate from a familiar setting. All of us remember Flash Gordon? There's actually a number of versions of this character who could count: it's old Yellow Peril, Ming the Merciless himself. Specifically, this comes from the Dynamite series Flash Gordon: Zeitgeist and Merciless: The Rise of Ming by Alex Ross (no connection any of the other Dynamite Flash Gordons, it seems).
Who is Ming? What has he done?
Rise of Merciless reveals Ming was once the Prince of the planet of Mongo, underneath the empire of his father Krang. A cold, ruthless man from the start, Ming vies for a stronger hand to guide Mongo in the midst of civil war and moves to gain more power. Ming quickly shows off exactly who he is by approaching a council of scientists about anti-gravity tech and then instantly murdering the first scientist who brings up previous attempts with anti-gravity have been unsuccessful. Ming uses this new technology to revolutionize Mongoan warfare, and uses them to capture the queen of a neighboring race who had earlier humiliated him. Ming hacks off her wings and humiliates her in front of his court, leading her to commit suicide.
Ming becomes nastier and nastier as he gets more power. When overlooking a group of brides to be, one of them looks Ming in the face. Ming spears the guard attending the brides in the face for not having conditioned them properly. When he's chosen a bride, Ming shows off by pushing her into a pool full of ravenous sea monsters to show off by rescuing her. Ming even murders his own father to become Emperor, having his father killed via a portable black hole. "I can never replace you...I was always meant to succeed you."
As Emperor, Ming uses his new "siege projector" device to assist in the conquering of entire planets. Ming demonstrates the siege protector by teleporting an entire race of desert people into the vacuum of space, where they all suffocate to death. Ming hits his lowest moment when his wife, unflattered by Ming's cold attitude toward her and her daughter Aura, starts to cheat on him with a servant of Ming's. Ming has the adulterous servant sent on a false flag mission to some newly annexed planets...and then uses a Wave-Motion Gun to vaporize him and three other populated planets with him. Ming tells his guard to bring a knife to his now-suicidal wife with full expectation of what she'll do with it.
By the time of Zeitgeist, Emperor Ming is in his prime. Ming has overseen the genocide of countless races and the annexation of countless planets, where he uses his siege protectors to cause world-ravaging disasters until the planets submit to him. Ming has the rebellious tortured and executed, setting up gladiator games where people are forced to fight for the death (and are sometimes both killed if Ming is unsatisfied). Ming also has a gallery of brides whom he's destroyed the minds of using his "thought converter" to make them slaves that yield to his every perverse desire. Such a fate Ming has in mind for Flash Gordon's beloved Dana Arden, whom Ming orders the mind erased of, Gordon himself killed and Dana brought to his chambers...
Ming is also behind the Nazis, and all of their atrocities—Adolf Hitler himself cowers before Ming's might—as Ming opens up his takeover of Earth with the usual "scar it with disasters and kill countless from the onset." Ming continues to regularly pummel the Earth with disasters years after his reign begins just so the humans don't become complacent, doing this to Germany until Hitler starts to improve as a minion...and shifting the disasters over to another nation instead. As startling a Bad Boss as ever, Ming has an underperforming minion executed and another random minion promoted, with his motivation to them being to work harder before he starts "promoting" anyone else. His grown-up daughter, Aura, is exiled for her treachery, and when she returns, Ming is elated—his wedding with the mind-wiped Dana needs an execution, after all!
Ming climaxes the comic by having the Nazis launch vicious, worldwide attacks on major cities, razing Chicago to Paris to London, before Flash Gordon becomes too much of a pain for him and Ming flies out to annihilate the entire planet himself to spite Gordon. Ming also notes that when he's finished using Dana, he'll kill her excruciatingly, too. Ming is deposed afterward and the last two issues have him as a prisoner, until Ming outwits everyone by tampering with security to unleash the bore worms to devour dozens of people. Flash Gordon and Ming end up warped into a dimensional pocket in a cliffhanger that...doesn't appear to have been followed up through since 2011.
Any mitigating factors?
None. Any loved ones Ming has? He kills them. Any redeeming moments he ever has? Farce for the sake of publicity or negated later. He kills his father, drives his wife to suicide and is all set to execute his own daughter, too, and his rapsheet is one of the longest out of any incarnation of Ming I've seen.
Conclusion?
Easy keeper.
Edited by Scraggle on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:07:16 PM
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I suppose in a similar vein I've idly thought about looking into Squirrel and Hedgehog, that weird North Korean furry propaganda war cartoon that actually got an English dub that apparently tones down the nationalism and whatnot.
Show was kind of hardcore with smoking, drinking, drugs, murder, and gun violence.
Never any blood, though, even in the scenes of people being shot (like Tintin at the beginning of The Black Island.
I’m back. I’ve been away from the forum for a while due to midterms coming up next week, but I have read Stellas posts on the matter and do know that Brad is on the chopping block. I’m gonna go through Stellas arguments from his posts.
First, I still think that Brad is the Scarman we see throughout the movie. There is still the neck wound and the similar looks, which I personally still think are valid reasons to believe that the Scarman through the film is Brad from the prologue. The looks is too similar for me to ignore, especially the neck wound.
Additionally, there is a bit of Dialogue, during the scene where Scarman confronts the police, he says something to the effect of “The magic of movies” after getting shot. While it’s only one slice of dialogue, this I believe invalidates the idea that he is a fiction character doing the rounds. The in-universe movie Hot-Blooded!, which we do see clips of, is a fairly strait foreword slasher movie, with not parody or meta awareness in it. Hot-blooded! does nothing to suggest that in-movie Scarman knows he is in a movie. So if Cuts killer was simply just a movie character made real and just following his characterization, he wouldn’t be aware or his status as a fictional character, nor would he be wisecracking about it.
Brad, however, being an actor who was so dead set on keeping his role that he murdered his director, would be in a position to make those comments since he would know that Hot-Blooded is fictional. Between this, as well as the neck wound and the same actor, I can’t really see the movie villain as just being a fictional character ripped out of the movie.
Secondly, about Brad not intentionally cursing Hot-Blooded!, I admit that I was wrong about that. Brad does not actively curse the film, it’s more of a consequence of his death than anything else. I screwed up on that. Sorry about confusion that caused.
However, even if he didn’t intentionally curse the movie, he still used his position within the curse to commit mass murder, a curse that was his own fault to begin with. The end result is the same, in that he is still doing the same thing he would have done if he did curse the movie.
Thirdly, about the movie being a stalk and slash flick. This one confuses me a bit. Just because Uncle Sam or the killer from The Prowler didn’t make the cut don’t mean that Brad can’t, especially since C Ms are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Fourthly, the kills in this movie are fairly brutal. The opening kills revolves around a tongue getting cut out, someone head is put into a wood splitter, a cameraman gets stabbed in the eye, the owner of the shooting location is hung on the dealing after he’s killed, and multiple people get doused in gasoline and set on fire. I feel like those stand out from typical slasher kills at least a bit.
So yeah, those my counters. Thoughts? Please note if I missed any arguments.
To Ming and
to EC comics guy
Edited by PureGrainAlkaSeltzer on Feb 22nd 2020 at 3:20:39 AM
I have no idea what I am doing
to Rastapopoulos and MING!
Abstain on EC Comics guy, though he sounds fecking horrible.
I can't make my mind up on Birds of Prey, despite having seen it, so I'm just gonna stay an abstain on that too. Sorry to be a wet blanket on that one.
I'll EP Grag Ardent by tomorrow afternoon UK time.
Trans rights are human rights. If you don't think that, please leave.If we count Lighty and Scraggle votes from the time, when Scraggle first brought up why Tengu Shredder doesn't belong here (right after Councillor EP), than there is at least 13 votes for cut and one abstain. People who voted to keep him, changed their votes recently (due to Bad Future Chrell being far worse), unless i missed anything.

R.J. Rastapopoulos
Watch me destroying my country