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
![]()
The Halloween (1978) page is pretty much about one guy
Edited by PureGrainAlkaSeltzer on Feb 22nd 2020 at 4:53:36 AM
I have no idea what I am doingOne other I'm not sure about but I'm taking the shot in the dark about anyway.
What's the setting?
This is another music candidate, from probably the single best form of musical narrative to get a CM from—a rock opera (like Protomen). This one comes from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the brainchild of the late composer Paul O'Neill. The album is Beethoven's Last Night, which retells the last days of Beethoven's life as he struggles to finish his legendary Tenth Symphony while ruminating on his dawning mortality. His Tenth Symphony, in fact, is so legendary it's holy...and coveted by the Devil himself, Mephistopheles.
Who is Mephistopheles? What has he done?
Mephistopheles, wicked originator of the Faustian bargain, Prince of Darkness, Lord of Hell, and first of the Fallen, etc. Mephistopheles is the Big Bad of this rock opera. He's as much of an arsehole as he usually is, tempting people into one-sided deals to trick them and take their souls into eternal damnation. Debuting in the album's fifth song, titled after him, Mephistopheles' wants to lay claim to Beethoven himself, saying Beethoven is damned—but he, "god of the second chance" will give Beethoven a chance to get his soul back if Beethoven hands over all his music, including the unfinished Tenth Symphony, so Mephistopheles can erase it from the memory of mankind.
Beethoven writhes and agonizes over the decision over the entire play but with help from the anthropomorphic personification of Fate (and her son Twist) Beethoven refuses to give his symphonies over to Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles tries to trick Beethoven into another deal, and when this fails, Mephistopheles soars over the horizon in "Misery", showing Beethoven a poor little orphan child in the gutter...and all the misery that awaits her should Beethoven defy him:
She is not your child
She's always another's
And those you abandon
They are left to me
And know I will impale her like a knife
Leave her twisting day after day after day of a very short life with me
Listen now closely and hear how I've planned it
Please let me tell you just how it will be
She'll feel the pain but she won't understand it
She'll think it's her fate
But we'll know it's me
[...]
So let me know
Have I been clear?
That I will magnify each cut and every bruise and every single childhood tear
I'll pick her scabs
Cripple a hand
Push a finger in each wound I make
Now tell me then
Do you understand?
Mephistopheles gleefully pledges to torture the child for the rest of her short life before her drags her off into eternal damnation to force Beethoven's hand. Thankfully, due to Twist's clever work (he tricks Mephistopheles into pledging a deal with Ludwig von Beethoven...the elder, the firstborn Beethoven who died. Mephistopheles storms off in a huff when Twist reveals Beethoven was never damned in the first place and Mephistopheles had no reason to take Beethoven's soul, except for his own cruel amusement—the basis of everything he does.
Any mitigating factors?
Bit tricky because Mephistopheles doesn't have the longest rapsheet for a version of Satan, but...given the medium, the rich personality Mephistopheles himself displays, and the recurring "trick innocent people into eternal damnation for giggles" thing he's got going is as good a start as any. What really clinches it for me is "Misery," where Mephistopheles gleefully dedicates an entire song describing the To the Pain tortures he'll inflict on a poor little orphan just to break the will of a man Mephistopheles has no claim over anyway. That's a sadistic touch that, IMO, pushes him over.
Conclusion?
Bad enough for Mephistopheles? What say we all?
Edited by Scraggle on Feb 22nd 2020 at 4:03:18 AM
Rat'lar, Ming, Satan.
Do any of the earlier Mings count, or is the Yellow Peril TOO blatant there?
Lighty:
- This comic?
- DC or Main Comics page?
- Are you still doing the IDW Transformers final writeups at some point?
to Ming, Mephisto, Rat'lar
Edited by G-Editor on Feb 22nd 2020 at 1:23:52 AM
My sandbox of EPs and other stuffFor the Doctor Who villains that appeared in both the show and Big Finish (i.e. Davros and Sutekh), should I do a write-up for their Big Finish roles? So far, we only have write-up's for their TV appearances.
Also, should I propose/do a write-up on Sutekh from Faction Paradox? Because it's still the same character with the same actor and everything.
With doing E Ps on characters who already count but do new stuff in other installments, its hardly a requirement and you can just explain what new stuff they do and make a write up for it(If its necessary) but if you'd like it you can make an EP for it, like how Palpatine got a new EP for the stuff he did in TROS.
Things are really about to get Fun around here![]()
There's no rule against it, but I suggest you don't, especially given that it's the same continuity.
to Mephisto.
Edited by Critica7 on Feb 22nd 2020 at 4:33:03 AM
Check out my current fanfiction project.
Well not exactly. Doctor Who is notorious for having a pretty loose continuity for anything that isn't onscreen.
Its not that unreasonable to consider the Big Finish versions distinct from their original counterparts, although they probably need to proposed separately if that's the case.
Edited by MGD107 on Feb 22nd 2020 at 4:47:35 AM
Ol' Scratch.
I see that Monster.Night Huntress is now officially a page. Just to clarify, I did the original 7 candidates, but, as I said in the tandem effortpost for Madigan and Trove, I have completed my part in the collaboration as far as I can tell, since Miraculous has graciously agreed to tackle the spinoffs (Looking forward to those, especially since they involve the first potential incarnations of Mme. Delphine and Dr. Louis LaLaurie to be potentially approved by the thread).
That's ok. Mir should take as much time as he needs.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Feb 22nd 2020 at 8:24:06 AM
Hello! Another effortpost from master ninja lurker CJ! This time it's another fanwork example, in this case for a Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic! Also, I binge-read the entire fic in a single night just for this effortpost, so you better appreciate what I did for y'all! (Jk, I loooooooved this fanfic and it was awesome!)
What's The Work?
Asylum
is a Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction that really deserves its own trope page, and honestly I would make one if I knew how to do that damn thing with the parentheses, since the namespace "Fanfic/Asylum" is already taken.
Basically, it takes place in an Alternate Universe wherein Alchemy is real, but people don't believe it's real, and Ed and Al's little stunt to bring their mother back from the dead only cost Ed his limbs (Al made it out fine) and burned down their house due to the rebound of power. It's also a bit of a modern AU too, with references to television and taking place in a very modern sounding...well, asylum. It also borrows elements from both the anime and the manga—for instance, the 03 anime's Homunculi are present (anime!Wrath, anime!Sloth, anime!Pride), but the ones from the manga (Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Greed) are characterized like their manga counterparts, e.g., Lust being a bloodthirsty dominatrix rather than a troubled Broken Bird and Greed being secretly selfless. And then there's their leader, who is an elderly woman chasing after immortality...
Those of you familiar with the 2003 FMA anime know exactly where this is going...let's talk about Doctor Dante!
Who Is Dante and What Has She Done?
Like in the anime, Dante is introduced as a seemingly kindly old woman, but unlike the anime, Ed very quickly notices that something isn't quite right with her.
She has her nurse, Lust administer drugs that she claims allows her patients (teenagers within the age ranges of 15-17) to sleep more easily, but this becomes suspect when Ed finds himself having very vivid and unusual nightmares about being, basically, experimented on.
The "nightmares" Ed was having weren't nightmares.
They were actually memories of him being used as a "conduit" for alchemic power. You see, in this AU, there are two types of people who can utilize alchemy—alchemists, who directly wield alchemy, and "conduits", who can amplify alchemic power. Conduits have alchemic power within them, but it never manifests, meaning that when alchemic power is funneled through a conduit by an alchemist, it latches onto the conduit's power (which exists, but never manifests) and the power of the alchemic reaction increases twofold. But it turns out not everyone is a conduit, and those who aren't and have alchemic energy funneled through their bodies gradually burn from the inside out. And even then, many actual conduit/alchemist pairs are harmed, killed or irreparably damaged by the process.
We learn sometime later that Dante had done exactly that to quite a few kids and teenagers, but we'll get to that.
Roy Mustang, one of the patients who, along with a selection of fellow patients and secretly rebellious staff members like Dr. Maes Hughes and an orderly by the name of ALEX LOUIS ARMSTRONG, is formulating a plan to escape from the asylum, informs the Elric brothers of all this, offering to help them get out. Dante has been using Roy for his alchemy talent and most of the others except Winry as conduits (at this point in the story, no one is sure what Dante wants with Winry, but we find out later and it's not good). We've actually seen, through Ed's "nightmares" how some of the people being tortured in this way react—Jean Havoc clenches his fists until his palms bleed; Riza Hawkeye screams until she's hoarse; Kain Fuery weeps silently. It's obviously not pleasant.
Unfortunately, Dante knew about the little resistance all along and cheerfully boasts to Edward the next day about how she has no qualms throwing away the victims who "break" after they've been used up, as she has plenty more usable patients stashed away elsewhere, in the wing of the hospital where they keep the adult patients. In fact, she's more than willing to do so to Ed and/or his brother when he breaks.
When Ed finally starts looking for info in that area, he is introduced, with the help of Dr. Hughes (who, as I said, is helping the patients escape), to Izumi Curtis, Dante's former alchemy student, who had so much alchemic power siphoned from her that by now, she's only got a few months to live, with a Blood from the Mouth+Incurable Cough of Death combo (kind of like in canon, but this time, it's directly Dante's fault she ended up like that). Roy sends many of his fellow rebels to her to learn certain disciplines that will help them during the "rituals". Ed also discovers the catatonic, broken bodies of a boy with a scar on his face and a missing arm (Scar), a boy with long black hair (Wrath) and two blond brothers (Russell and Fletcher Tringham). Izumi reveals that Wrath was her son, and Dante basically kidnapped him shortly after his birth to see if Izumi's power was hereditary. It was, and she started using him for his power, which caused him to resent his birth mother and lash out at her during the rare opportunities she had to visit him. Obviously, Izumi's pretty upset about that, but she sadly assures Ed that there's nothing that can be done about that now.
In a flashback chapter to when Roy, Riza and Havoc first made it to the asylum, we learn what happened to several of the above mentioned victims, as well as the full extent of what the victims have to go through. Roy, Riza and Havoc all end up in horrific agonizing pain with each session, and the same is all but confirmed to be true for anyone else who goes through it. Among the aforementioned victims, Fletcher broke first, leaving his brother so completely distraught that he remained in Heroic BSoD mode until he broke as well. Havoc notes that Fletcher very likely didn't even know he was a conduit, meaning that he was tortured until he broke without even knowing why. Dante started sending Wrath to a member of the adult wing (later revealed to be Envy), who corrupted him into a twisted little hellspawn, but that didn't last and Wrath himself broke.
And as we'll see later, these are only a few of the victims Dante subjected to this torture.
Oh, and we later find out that Roy is suffering from the beginnings of the same affliction Izumi is dealing with—because he's been there the longest and been capable of lasting longer than any other patient besides her without breaking, he is considered Dante's "favorite patient". She can siphon as much power as she wants from him and keep reusing him again and again.
So shortly after the escape plan is formulated and Ed confronts Roy over his condition, Greed comes to Ed for some help; at first, it seems he's gonna blackmail him with the fact that he eavesdropped on their plan, but he reveals that instead, he wants Ed to take his friend Martel with him when he escapes, wanting her to be safe. When Ed questions why he doesn't come along with, Greed reveals that, like Roy and Izumi, his body is rejecting the alchemy and causing him to expel blood...only the blood is not being expelled through his mouth. Greed has more alchemy than Martel, so Dante uses him more, just like Roy. By this point, Greed has resigned himself to death, and honestly, it's just another example of a horrible thing Dante's been up to.
When Ed asks about Greed's other friend, Kimblee...Greed simply states that he's "broken in a different way". That while he was always a Jerkass, he used to be able to hide it better and use it to his friends' benefit. Thanks to Dante, he can't anymore.
Greed shares one last secret, namely the location of Dante's file cabinet keys, which is then confirmed by Armstrong when Ed sneaks into Dante's office. He discovers files on the many children Dante had funneled through the asylum.
One was a 14-year-old, procured after his father's death and his friend Gregory. They barely lasted a year. The clincher is that Ed checks out the date and discovers that it was 123 years ago.
Ed flips through more files and discovers that countless more children suffered in the asylum—what makes Ed curious is the revelation that while most of the folders are of boys, every 50 to 70 years there are folders for girls that (besides Izumi, Riza and Martel) only have folders saying "Pending" and then "Complete". Among them is a young girl named Sonja, whose file was dated 76 years before the story started and Ed notices something familiar about her eyes. Then it hits him...They're Dante's eyes.
Dante picked these girls (except Riza, Martel and Izumi) so she could switch bodies with them, then dispose of them. And it gets worse: Connecting the dots prompts Ed to search desperately for Winry's file. Winry's file says "Pending".
The pieces end up falling completely into place: In order to transfer her soul into another individual's body, Dante would need a lot of alchemic power. That's why she's been siphoning it from her alchemically gifted patients. She needs their power in order to switch bodies with a younger woman once her current body grows too old. And Winry's her next target.
At this point it becomes crunch time for the escape plan, as it's become clear that Dante's not keen on waiting any longer for Winry to become an adult. She'll take her body sooner rather than later, so they must act.
The escape plan is set in motion. Roy fakes being sick and Al and Martel actually get sick. During this time, Al secretly rescues Wrath, Scar and the Tringham brothers due to Ed having wanted them to not be left behind. Then there's an awesome "Roy and Ed vs. Envy and Lust" that gets rudely interrupted by Kimblee killing Gluttony, blowing up Envy and knocking out Lust before going out with a smile (it's implied that Greed died during the latest "ritual" and Kimblee finally lost what little sanity he had left as a result), and Ed breaks Izumi out as Roy tries to pull a Heroic Sacrifice.
Ed and Izumi arrive at a safe house the team has been staying at, where Ed is feeling super guilty about Roy's sacrifice. They're gonna go back to save him, but first they need to recuperate. Among other things, it's also at this point that Ed and Al discover through a set of old newspaper clippings, that the asylum's overseer was their father, Hohenheim. Ed tries to ask Izumi, who was holed up in a particular room to look after Martel, for answers, only to find that she's succumbed to her illness with the now deceased Wrath in her arms (I'M NOT CRYING, YOU ARE!). At this point, Ed resolves to go back and save Roy, then burn the asylum to the ground.
After Scar and the Tringhams die, they're buried with Izumi and Wrath in the yard, their graves marked with an oak tree with the message "They deserved better" carved in it, and the team formulates their rescue plan. On the morning of the preparations' completion, Ed gets an unexpected visit from Hohenheim.
Hohenheim, after getting the tar beaten out of him by Ed, explains that he left the asylum because he thought it would weaken Dante, as the two of them were only capable of achieving their body jumping skills if they pooled their power together, but it turns out Dante managed to compensate by siphoning it out of her patients.
Hohenheim proceeds to explain that he has been planning for a while to end the asylum once and for all, but he can't do it alone—Dante is in possession of the Philosopher's Stone, which allows her to jump bodies without conduits. Its power has weakened, but when it was strong, she used it to create her "employees", who Ed finds out are actually Homunculi. Ed is then given the bombshell that one of them, Sloth (the Director's receptionist), was born from the remains of his mother. Ed allows Hohenheim to do his thing on the condition that he leave without making his presence known to Al afterward, as Al only recently got over the Parental Abandonment. Hoho Papa reluctantly agrees.
The rescue mission begins. After they split up and search, Riza and Al find Roy, only for him to warn them that it's a trap. Ed and Havoc head to the Alchemy chamber and find a KO'd Alphonse with a broken arm, an injured Riza and Roy in a not so great state of mind. Just as they're about to get him and Al out of there, Ed realizes too late that the paint on the chamber's latest transmutation circle is still fresh and Dante activates it, causing them all incredible pain.
Riza shoots at Dante but fails to kill her and as Ed tells Riza to just take Havoc and get off the circle with him, Dante activates it again to silence him, deciding to "scold" him for being "rude", commenting that he destroyed her "favorite inventions" (i.e., the Homunculi). She then notes, however, that some of said creations still remain and one is "eager to speak with him".
Out of the shadows comes Sloth...dressed up exactly like Trisha Elric. Purple dress, apron, Motherly Side Plait and everything. What Ed says to Dante is the only fitting response I could possibly think of.
- Ed: You bitch.
Sloth-as-Trisha gives Ed an absolutely agonizing Shapeshifter Guilt Trip and it nearly succeeds in finally breaking him, telling him that he cruelly made her suffer by bringing her back and leaving her behind as their house burned down and that he deserves to be punished. However, Roy epically snaps him out of it and gives him a pep talk, telling him that his real mother would never blame him for such a thing.
Dante tries to reactivate the circle again, but Roy has already pushed Ed out of it by then, and at this point, Dante drops all affability and orders Sloth to attack Ed. Cue Hohenheim bursting in as a cavalry (prompting Dante to shriek with anger at the sight of him), and explaining that she's using the circle to take his alchemic power in a more forceful manner and it will kill the others if it's not stopped.
Hohenheim and Ed have a touching father-son moment before setting off to defeat respective villains. Ed battles with Sloth, who's still trying to guilt trip him, and kills her through pretty much the same means he did in the anime—altering her chemical make up and causing her to fade away. Meanwhile, Hohenheim tears out Dante's Philosopher's Stone and destroys it, killing her and effectively ending her reign of terror.
Hohenheim then tears out his own Philosopher's Stone and gives it to Ed so he can heal his friends and, when Al comes to, they have a bonding moment before Hohenheim finally dies peacefully.
We later discover that Hohenheim destroying Dante's stone also had the consequence of killing Pride, her one remaining Homunculus, which is good, as he was in the middle of ambushing Winry, Fuery, Breda and Falman (Winry attacked him with a wrench in the meantime and it's kind of implied that the four of them thought that killed him).
The team burns the asylum to the ground, we have a brotherly moment between Ed and Al and then a timeskip epilogue and everyone lives happily ever after the end.
PHEW! That was long!
Heinous Standard?
Dante is pretty interesting in this fic, as in the original FMA 03, Dante shared the heinous standard with Kimblee, Envy and Pride (and also Barry the Chopper and Dietlinde Eckhart, but they're not in this fic so we'll skip them), who are all equally as evil as she is, just in different ways. However, here, Kimblee, Envy and Pride are Demoted to Extra and Kimblee has a redeeming quality, namely a Villainous Friendship with Greed and Martel, discounting him by default.
As a result, Dante ends up being the most prominent villain in the story and shows herself to be the most evil. Her actions have caused nothing but pain and death for countless people, most of them being children all for the sake of gaining power for herself, and said actions have either directly or indirectly killed people for hundreds of years. And then there's her attempt at controlling Ed towards the end, dressing Sloth up like his dead mom and trying to manipulate his trauma and guilt. She's completely earned her reputation among the patients of being a bitch.
Mitigating Qualities?
Absolutely none. Early on, she acts like she cares about the kids' health, expresses "concern" for them and whatnot, but it's all pretty obviously an act and everyone sees right through her, with her nickname among the patients being "Doctor Bitch". She gladly drops the act when she finds that the jig is up and Ed knows what she's really up to, keeping her polite, soft-spoken attitude whilst teasing and taunting him about how he's soon to break. Dante's relationship with Hohenheim is left slightly more ambiguous here, but what is made clear is that she didn't love him. In the end, all she loved or cared about was herself.
Conclusion? She qualified in canon so I think she qualifies here too, but I'll see what you guys think.
Edited by CJCroen1393 on Feb 23rd 2020 at 2:44:38 AM

@Age
IIRC, Rooster Teeth is helping out with that, and we all know how those guys like there bad guys.
TO MING
Things are really about to get Fun around here