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
His Batman: The Brave and the Bold version.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Also, off-topic but is there a way to search within a thread? This thread is over 8000 pages long so I can't read all of it to see if someone has been discussed already.
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The Killing Joke Joker's not a CM. Nor is the one from Emperor Joker.
The one from Batman & Captain America isn't a CM either, at least partly because he famously told Red Skull to his face how much he hated Nazis.
I don't think Pre-Crisis Joker qualifies as a CM either.
The Joker is one of those ones that Depending on the Writer. So while he counts a lot of the time, there's just as many versions that don't. Like his anime film version. By the way. Why doesn't that one count?
Sorry. I was writing this when you posted that my bad.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 24th 2020 at 9:47:27 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
He is on the list of special cases on the FAQ page, so yeah.
Also, as bummed as I am about canon!Aerys being cut, at least we have a fanfic version. So we do still have a version of him, at least.
Speaking of fanfic versions of non-keepers, I know that his canon version does not qualify, but could a fanfic version of Christian Grey that plays his abusive, misogynistic personality fully seriously (instead of going the Romanticized Abuse route like the book) qualify? As long as the fic has a substantial plot, ie one that is not just ‘Christian is giant prick’?
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.Also no one else from Cassandra palmer counts for now at least. Aienslann might one day count and I'll keep my eye on his next appearances but as off now he's not heinous enough
Edited by miraculous on Feb 24th 2020 at 9:26:33 AM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."![]()
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I mean as long as it's not just "oh this character sucks" fic and has an actual plot. Sure I guess.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 24th 2020 at 11:26:44 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Yay. Christian is on my personal most hated characters list for his atrocious treatment of Ana and his... everything else, so I will get to working on that.
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As long as it's not just a case of Ron the Death Eater, I'd say go for it.
Anyway, how do you guys feel about this pic
◊ of Red Skull from Super-Villain Team-Up?
Yes to the Red Skull pic. I got an EP from a podcast that I've become a big fan of.
What’s the Work
Dice Funk is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast hosted by Austin Yorski. This EP covers Season 1 “Stoneroot” DMed by Johnny Maloney with Leon Thomas playing Rinaldo, Jess Kitrick as Jayne, and later as Allana, and Austin as Anne. The season follows the PCs as they get wrapped up in a series of schemes within the city of Stoneroot, including a possible plan to summon the horrible world ending being Gorfinax.
Who is Phiro and what does she do?
Phiro is the daughter of the lord of Acamoros, years earlier Rinaldo had an affair with her brother and it is heavily implied that Phiro exposed the affair, resulting in Rinaldo being ordered executed, only to be exiled instead when Phiro’s brother threatened suicide. In the story itself, Phiro has been sent to take over Stoneroot for Acamoros.
Phiro is first seen by the party when Fidrick, the captain of the Stoneroot guard, reveals himself to be working for her, though Phiro has been covering her real intentions under the guise of being part of a well meaning rebellion against the Lord Earlan who rules Stoneroot. She tells the party that she is hoping to inspire resentment against Earlan within the city and to use that to help the “rebellion.” She orders the party to investigate the quarry where the city’s famous stone is mined, as her plan to bomb the quarry may have been compromised.
The players abandon the quarry job and after some other developments, Phiro murders Fidrik despite him being her ally. Phiro later goes to meet with members of the Stonerotten gang who have promised to give her weapons. Anne, however, burns down the bar where the meeting was set to take place and so Phiro doesn’t get her weapons. She responds to this by going to the Twist, the bar the Stonerotten work out of, killing the door guard, and setting the building ablaze. After leaving the building she and her followers suddenly appear and save the building, putting out the fire and healing people as a way to cover up their recovering the weapons stored in the basement and in order to turn public opinion against Earlan. As the fire that Anne set gets more out of hand, Phiro starts to rally the people into a fervor against Earlan.
After this Phiro ambushes Earlan while he is at the quarry, trying to save his son who has been kidnapped by the Stonerotten. Phiro captures Earlan and several of his guards, while the rest of the guards, as well as many of the Stonerotten, are burned alive by her men inside the quarry. While this is happening, Phiro’s men attack the Lord’s Manor, slaughtering everyone inside, including the innocent staff. The captured people are locked up in the Sanitorium as Phiro continues to take over more of the town.
When the group goes to leave the city, they find that the Acamorian soldiers have taken over the gates, which are crowded with people trying to escape from the fire Anne set. The soldiers however are individually talking with people and sending some people back into the city and the fate of the people who aren’t sent back in is unknown. It’s not clear how much Phiro knows about this but the guards are working for her so this is likely her doing.
Much later, the group, along with Earlan escapes from Stoneroot and travels to the town of Rotswold in order to stop Lonnegan, the other Big Bad of the campaign. When they finally find Lonnegan, who has fused with Gorfinax, Phiro shows up, intending to capture or kill Earlan and Rinaldo, who she blames for the fire. Throughout the final battle, she dismisses their warnings about the dangers of Gorfinax and kills Earlan before turning to attack Rinaldo. Ultimately, Allana accidentally summons Gorfinax, who kills Phiro and destroys the world.
Mitigating Factors
Nothing really, she’s working to help Acamoros take over Stoneroot but her appearance at Rotswold has her saying that Rinaldo will pay for what he has done to her career, implying that she really only cares for her own advancement and has abandoned the plan to conquer Stoneroot due to the fire. There is a brief line in Johnny’s DM Bible that has her mentioning “the honor of my family” as part of her reason for attacking Rinaldo but the part of the Bible that talks about Rinaldo’s backstory says that her likely motive for exposing Rinaldo’s affair was to ruin her brother reputation so her standing was improved, also that line was never actually said in the podcast since the players actions diverged from Johnny’s plan. Her saving the Twist from the fire is just a publicity stunt since she set the fire and killed the door guard, the DM Bible says that she did similar things throughout the city when it started burning but that was similarly a publicity stunt.
Heinousness
Here’s where my doubts lie with her since the standard is very high. I’ll start with the other NPCs since that is easier to talk about. The Stonerotten don’t really do that many horrible things, just a lot of threats, selling weapons to Phiro and holding Earlan’s son hostage, they apparently do participate in sex slavery but we see little evidence of this. Earlan himself has actually been working to prevent the summoning of Gorfinax for 600 years and has been sacrificing his children in order to stay in power and keep Gorfinax trapped. Lonnegan, despite being the other main villain, doesn’t do too much that is heinous, he threatened to destroy all of Rotswold but doesn’t actually follow through with that threat, he nearly kills Earlan, turns 20 of his followers to stone and tries to do the same to a young child. His fusing with Gorfinax is explained as him trying to use the power for his own gain and he has no intentions of summoning the world destroying being, the DM Bible does say that his followers were killing people in Stoneroot but that is never mentioned in the podcast itself.
My real worry, surprisingly, lies with the PCs themselves. Rinaldo turned a fistfight with some quarry workers into a deadly brawl that left 4 of them dead, started a riot in order to get into the Lord’s Manor, intentionally hanging back in case the crowd was attacked, he also wanted to start a riot to get out of Stoneroot which would have gotten innocents killed, he killed Jess’ first PC Jayne when she betrayed him, and according to his player, he was planning on either abandoning or killing his best friend Anne, due to her being very dangerous. Jayne ended up betraying the party and tried to sell Rinaldo to the Stonerotten for sex slavery. Anne abandoned the Lord’s son to possibly be killed by Lonnegan, threatened to burn the face of a quarry worker who attacked her, led a pair of stone Golems to the gates of Stoneroot in order to escape the city, endangering the crowd present, and her worst act was to set the bar Phiro was in on fire after jamming all of the doors so no one could get out, this act is made worse by the fire accidentally getting out of hand and destroying the city, killing many people (Anne doesn’t really react to the fire spreading so it’s not clear if she cares that it got out of hand), it should be noted that Anne justified her burning the bar by saying that the evil people inside will be punished in the afterlife, and the good people would be rewarded in the afterlife (Anne is incredibly stupid and so doesn’t fully understand the implications of what she’s doing most of the time). Allana’s hands are mostly clean but she accidentally summoned Gorfinax in a failed attempt to stop his summoning, resulting in the world being destroyed.
I’m not really sure how well she stacks up to all of that, she exiled Rinaldo, publicly ruined her brother, killed several dozen people, including one of her own allies and the Lord Earlan, set fire to the Twist, was planning to bomb the quarry, and may or may not have left the people of Stoneroot to die in the fire Anne set.
Conclusion?
I’m very unsure if she meets the heinousness standard so I’ll leave it up to you guys.
Edited by papyru30 on Feb 24th 2020 at 10:59:17 AM
@MasterN: It's possible, sure. But I wouldn't encourage seeking out a fanfic version of Christian Grey just because you hate the character and want a CM version of him.
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.Wait a minute, we cut Aerys from ASOIAF?
Edited by KazuyaProta on Feb 24th 2020 at 1:22:27 PM
Watch me destroying my country

Weird question but is there any version of The Joker besides the 2019 movie version who isn't a CM?