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
For Cy, I'll mention this argument
, because it made me wary. Thing is, we never know for SURE what's on the other tapes, and Cy seemingly liked to record EVERYTHING. If it were cleared there were other victims (more than just the expressions of the BAU agents), I'd probably be fine keeping him, but as it is...I say cut, if barely.
@Klavice: That sounds like a bizarre case-by-case scenario.
@ACW: And therein lies the problem with ambiguity. It's possible he had more victims on the tapes; it's possible he didn't. We don't know at this point, and we might not ever know.
@Draxterrus: Okay, well, a while ago, Ravok was a "specialist" alongside Lighty and Scrags, and I was something of a sub-specialist. But then real life and jobs got in the way and now both of us don't spend much time in the forum. Both of us said that Ramos should stay. Soooooooooo by your logic, Ramos should stay. Apparently.
I don't like this kind of mentality. Yeah, Lighty and Scrags have pumped out literally over a thousand villains who are now CMs, but please do not place your vote simply because "Well the "specialsts" said he/she doesn't count; I'm gonna trust them and no one else." Form your own opinion based on the effortposts presented and other additional facts presented during discussions.
And if that's the case, then that's fine. But even if "Lighty and Scrags wouldn’t be pleased if he’s staying," what matters is that we form our own opinions here, regardless of the opinions of the "two specialists," as you said. There's been a crapload of candidates people haven't agreed upon. That's just how it goes sometimes.
Edited by Tyk5919 on Feb 29th 2020 at 7:28:58 AM
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.Cut Karza. After sleeping on it, I'll say cut Ramos; as much as I want him to stay, I can't overlook the fact that Cat Adams, with the same amount of resources, kills way more people than him. However, I do agree with ![]()
and
.
@Lighty: Mind if I PM you about the Invisible Man?
@Vile: I saw the Percy Jackson movies years ago, and Kronos struck me as too generic. I could be wrong, though.
Yes to Ken. Cut Karza.
Also sorry I wasn't here yesterday, but I was sick. Though I am feeling much better today.
Vile: Also as someone who has seen the Percy Jackson movies. Kronos doesn't count there. A) He's to generic and B) He doesn't cross the baseline heinous standard. Being overshadowed by Luke who gets a big dose of Adaptational Villainy and complete ruining of my favorite character, but also doesn't count for obvious reasons.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 29th 2020 at 7:17:37 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup threadOKAY I GUESS I'M LEAVING THIS MESSAGE ON MY PHONE SINCE MY COMPUTER DECIDED TO SHUT ITSELF OFF ABRUPTLY. ![]()
![]()
Anyway...with Floyd, I'm okay with him staying, if only because cannibals are surprisingly rare in Criminal Minds, along with his added touch of personal qualities—bragging to a priest about feeding a woman to her own search party, manipulating a man to kill more people so he'd go free, etc.
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.OK, here is my last EP for the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. This is the Big Bad for two books (a rarity for the Disc, and actually unique as this isn't a magical being), Thud! (City Watch/Vimes) and Raising Steam (Moist von Lipwig, with Vimes a supporting character). I present to you Grag Ardent; Much like my previous EPs this is quite long, but I promise this is justified as it covers two books!
Who is Grag Ardent?
Grag Ardent is a "Grag" (in dwarfish, akin to a priest/wise man or something along those lines), and a Knight Templar who believes that dwarven society has strayed from the path laid by Tak, the closest thing the dwarves have to a god. This includes dwarves who have moved to the human city-state of Ankh-Morpork (more dwarves live in Ankh-Morpork than the dwarf capital now), dwarves that were born in Ankh-Morpork and identify with it more culturally, or any human innovation such as the Clacks (think the telegraph) or the train (the main plot of Steam is kicked off by the invention of this). Most of all, however, he really, really takes offence to dwarves that identify as feminine, dress in feminine ways (to put it basically, dwarves accept that females exist in their society to ensure the species doesn't die off, but attitudes dictate you don't go about advertising this, and this later becomes a key plot point for The Fifth Elephant) etc. Rather than just adopt the once-traditional viewpoint that femininity is odd, however, Ardent... takes a rival faction of "delvers" that inspires violence and hatred, attempting to kick off war twice, first against the trolls and then against almost everyone that isn't him or his ideal definition of dwarf.
What does Ardent do?
In Thud, the seventh book for the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Ardent starts as the Dragon-in-Chief to Grag Hamcrusher, a fellow fundamentalist who lead a group of dwarfs that bought some abandoned buildings in the city, then started building an underground community below Ankh-Morpork while Hamcrusher (I'll call him "Ham" for brevity's sake) preaches dwarven superiority over trolls. This exacerbates race relations between dwarf and troll, itself made worse by the anniversary of "Koom Valley", a historic conflict between dwarf and troll where both sides ambushed each other. Unbeknownst to the Watch, Ham actually died just before the book and the death has been hushed up by Ardent and blamed on a troll.
When we first outright see Ardent, the news has broken that Ham is dead. Vimes arrives at the residence of the deep-downers, where Ardent's reluctant assistant, Helmclever ("Helm"), is aware of what's really happened and deliberately provokes Vimes into investigating by being obstructive, also subtly leaving a clue in a drawn dwarf symbol he "accidentally" draws in some coffee and Carrot later identified. Ardent then arrives; he doesn't appear too villainous, although he's clearly uncomfortable with the Watch and makes a number of racist comments towards humans in the process, also initially refusing to let Captain Angua in with himself and Vimes because Angua is a woman (establishing his sexism isn't restricted to dwarves). Ardent invites Vimes into his office, sticking to the story of a troll doing it because a troll club was found next to Ham's corpse, refusing to cooperate until Vimes pressures him, at which point Ardent, claiming the other grags have seniority, reluctantly leads him and Angua downstairs where they have a discussion, eventually leaving back to the Watch house. Here the narrative cuts to a troll named Brick, a troll who, while high on troll drugs, actually did make it into the "hole", but did not actually kill Hamcrusher, which becomes a Spanner in the Works for Ardent.
As racial tension continues, Captain Carrot, Captain Angua and "Sally" (the new vampire recruit for the Watch) return to visit, where they meet Ardent again. Ardent pretends to be more cooperative, but still obstructs them. Here, the party find Brick's footprints and a sheep skull the troll was carrying, which causes Ardent to panic because the troll didn't actually kill Ham (that was a lie he'd made up, so he didn't expect one) and clue the Watch that something's off. Carrot, upon leaving the dwarf hole, tells Vimes that Hamcrusher clearly didn't die where they said he did, and has been dead for longer than Ardent was pretending; the mortal wound also doesn't match the club and he'd already died by the time the club hit him. Carrot, Angua and Sally also found a dwarven arcane sigil of what they believe to be the Following Dark, but later turns out to be a dying summoning of the Summoning Dark... which has infected Vimes, it later turns out. Fastforward a bit while the Watch have to de-escalate several angry mobs of dwarfs and trolls, incurring a few injuries; Sally and Angua do their own investigating, finding several dead dwarfs who had been murdered in a cover-up, including a worker who had taken time to die, making the same arcane sign from before in his own blood as a Dying Curse. Meanwhile, Brick seeks out Mr Shine, the troll king for help; Shine delivers Brick to the Watch and explains that the Summoning Dark may be on the loose, and that the young troll might be able to help; Brick confirms Hamcrusher's death was indeed done by other dwarfs, and once Vimes & Shine meet they confirm the dwarfs and Hamcrusher had found a Device (the capital D is key there) with something the grags, including Ardent, did not want people to know.
Vimes leaves the meeting with Mr Shine to hear that dwarfs from the Low King's land and Uberwald are heading to Koom Valley, as are the grags including Ardent; multiple trolls are doing the same, and it looks like war. Vimes heads home to get some rest… only to find that Ardent has committed the unique crime of sending a dwarven assassin to try and kill Vimes's wife, Sybil, as well as their year-old son, also called Sam; he ostensibly does this to scare Vimes away from further involvement, but unsurprisingly this achieves the opposite result. The attempt is foiled by the combination of Willikins, who shanks one assassin to death, Sybil using a swamp dragon as an improvised flamethrower on the next (who tried to burn her alive and found out the hard way that a woman working with dragons will wear very good fireproof equipment), and the Summoning Dark which protects Young Sam and kills the final assassin. This understandably drives Vimes into a rage that lets the Summoning Dark get a good foothold.
Vimes, Sgt Colon and the more reasonable Grag Bashfullson (who is loyal to the Low King) question an arrested Helm, who admits that Ham ordered his troops to kill the miners for hearing the Device, which contained a recording of B'hrian Bloodaxe (dwarf King during first battle at Koom Valley)... at which point Ardent reported Hamcrusher happened to die in a meeting of the grags and instructed Helm to mutilate Ham's body with a club to make it look like a troll did. When Helm refused - the club was from Mr Shine as a gift for playing the game of Thud - Ardent took the club and bashed the corpse himself. As the interrogation heats up, the candles are displaced and the (fear of the) Summoning Dark kills Helmclever.
Fastforward a bit and some of the Watch travel to Koom Valley to prevent war. Vimes confronts the Summoning Dark, and eventually meets the Low King. Here, Vimes, Low King and co discover another Device which reveals that Bloodaxe and the Troll King who died at Koom Valley had not in fact died enemies, but peacefully played the game of Thud together (think a variation of chess) until they both passed away. Even seeing their corpses stuck in this pose, Ardent accuses the Device of lying (though The Tape Knew You Would Say That comes in to call Ardent out on this), and then, accusing the other party of fabricating the whole thing in spite of the evidence in front of him, charges the Low King in a last desperate act of attempted regicide, only to be stopped when Bashfullson hits him in the throat with dwarf!karate and incapacitates him. Thus ends his role in this book.
—
In Steam, Ardent returns as the Big Bad after his defeat at the hands of the Watch, the Low King and Grag Bashfullson, ungrateful of the Low King having pardoned the culprits of the previous book (in Ardent's case, partly because he has supporters). Not content with just manipulation, obstruction and lower-level violence, Ardent ups his game by doubling down on the reality-rejection, radicalising young dwarves to go and attack the Clacks towers outside Ankh-Morpork, then in the Sto Plains and Uberwald, uncaring that many of them will die either in the attempt or when Ankh-Morpork tracks them down. He also radicalises the dwarven cities in Uberwald to the point that when Ankh-Morpork born dwarves come to visit their relatives there, they are set upon and possibly killed; one visitor only survives because Bashfullson intervenes and gets him out of there alive.
Upon learning that the city of Ankh-Morpork, with the work of engineer and prodigy Dick Simnel, has invented the train, he turns his followers against that by declaring the railway to be an abomination and encourages violence against anyone Moist von Lipwig and Harry King hire to work on the railways, resulting in multiple deaths across various lines; one of these incidents is enough that the usually pacifistic Moist is driven into a rage and - admittedly with the help of a goblin berserker tonic - outright kills three of the delvers responsible, while the goblins kill off the rest. Ardent also sends a naive dwarf to sabotage Iron Girder, Simnel's prototype, but this fails when Girder goes off and kills the attempted saboteur; Death appears to ask why the naive dwarf why he did this, and to pray Tak really did want him to follow Ardent’s orders, lest he end up with a shitty afterlife.
Throughout the book, Ardent travels to various dwarven settlements and even bars in Ankh-Morpork, infiltrating them and turning them against either "non-normal" dwarves, or the other species like trolls, humans or goblins (only recently recognised as actual citizens); he does this with the "everybody knows" Common Knowledge to fool them and also by playing on feelings of discrimination (which they are getting because of Ardent's fanaticism). He also turns the cave-dwelling Dwarves in Uberwald so that where anyone caught attempting to flee is brutally murdered (though many successfully flee to Ankh-Morpork or the land of Diamond King of Trolls), and when a dwarven engineer/spy from Ankh-Morpork gives him information, Ardent responds by (after the initial payment) having his throat slit, partly because the dwarf was from Ankh-Morpork. Also, for extra points, he learns that a human male and a female dwarf in Llamedos (the Disc Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Wales, even smaller and outright farming its rain) are planning to be wed and has another follower attempt to kill all at the wedding; though only two people die thanks to the intervention of a Badass Bystander, one of the deaths is the bride-to-be, much to the sadness of those present.
Upon learning that the Low King is planning to take the train back via the recently completed line to Uberwald, he has his men ambush & derail one train then attempt to slaughter all inside, only to discover it’s a decoy staffed entirely by a Badass Crew who proceed to kick the asses of their attackers. The delvers eventually clock on to the actual train and attempt the same, but fail again thanks to a different Badass Crew, including Moist, Vimes himself, Detritus and Bluejohn, as well as a disguised Lord Vetinari. Once the Low King (who at this point has disclosed he’s actually a she) arrives at Schmaltzberg, there's only minimal resistance as most of Ardent's remaining men surrender quickly, realising he isn't worth dying for. Bashfullson quickly catches Ardent, who attempts to remain defiant until he sees the Queen pull an axe on him, at which point he is terrified. The Queen vows that as she's a moderniser, she will see Ardent put on trial, with the surviving wedding guests from Llamedos, the families of those tortured and others testifying; though Queen vows that she will respect any wishes for mercy they give, she does not plan to let off Ardent a second time. That's the last we see of him (whether Pterry had any plans for him after that, we'll never know).
Heinous Standard
Ardent passes it for the Watch, being ultimately grander in scale than either of the Watch’s confirmed CMs; Captain Findthee Swing (confined to Ankh-Morpork) or Wolfgang von Uberwald (while in a position of power in Uberwald, mostly kept his activities there, and even then was mostly a background helper while his co-conspirator did most of the work). Ardent sows discord everywhere he can, even targeting places completely out of the way like Llamedos (which is the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Wales only smaller, for Christ's sake). He's also absurdly petty, targeting the aforementioned Llamedos because a female-dwarf and male human opted to get married and he viewed this as sinful, and is one of the few Discworld antagonists that Would Hurt a Child (others make threats, Ardent's the only one to carry it out). Even by the standards of the "deep downers", he surpasses his former boss, Hamcrusher, and willingly exploits his boss's death (if he didn't kill him directly, but that's not confirmed).
In terms of the Disc, he may lack the reach of Ipslore the Red (Reality Warper as his Dragon-in-Chief), and may not be an official authority like Lady Felmet, but he does eventually gain unofficial command of the dwarven capital and exploits this mercilessly. Another unique point for Ardent is that he is the only mortal being to be a recurring Big Bad (the other recurring main villains are the Auditors of Reality, Elves and Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, which are all immortal and some form of Eldritch Abomination). Ardent, a "mere" mortal, has no such excuse.
Mitigating Factors?
Hell no. Ardent is unpleasant from the get-go even before he's confirmed the villain in Thud, relentlessly petty, racist and spiteful, and his talk of religion is mostly used because he's Egocentrically Religious. When Death even talks with one of Ardent's misguided subordinates who died trying to sabotage the Super Prototype of the train, Iron Girder, he strongly implies that Tak does not approve of Ardent's actions and that anyone Ardent has fooled is not in for the paradise they were promised. Furthermore, unlike preceding extremist, Dee (the co-conspirator with Wolfgang in Fifth Elephant), Ardent does not have a tragic backstory or reason for wanting to incite a war and depose the Low King, and lacks much in the way of comedy like many Disc villains and heroes dislike. The closest he gets to a redeeming quality is referring to Albrecht Albrechtson as a "friend", but once Albrecht tells him to shove it, Ardent imprisons him and only keeps him alive because Albrecht is respected enough to possibly undermine him if he dies.
Ardent is definitely fanatical, but not so delusional he's excused from his actions. His hatred towards the Low King, even after being pardoned for conspiracy to depose him (later revealed to be "her"), attempts to incite war and commit regicide, shows he's just a petty prick. Despite all his talk of being in it for the dwarves, his manipulation/mistreatment of Helmclever (which got him killed) and willingness to send his subordinates to their deaths make this ring hollow, and even the more conservative dwarves think he's nuts, to the point that many flee or try to. He'll even break his own preached taboo that destroying words is a crime (think rubbing out a blackboard) by sticking with the cover story of the deep-downers and going along with the attempts of Hamcrusher, then exploiting Ham's death.
Conclusion?
I believe Ardent, the Discworld version of Osama Bin Laden, is an easy
from me.
Edited by captainmarkle on Feb 29th 2020 at 9:49:16 AM
Trans rights are human rights. If you don't think that, please leave.
Grag (huh discworld is getting it's own page ?)
I'm actually more cool with keeping Floyd over the other four tbh. In terms of crimes he does seem to exceed them and he's a more unique then the various random killers the show produces.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Btw a query related to this thread has come up on Ask the tropers
.
Would people here mind coming to help answer it
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Yes to Ardent.
A late happy birthday to you Kaz.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 29th 2020 at 7:50:00 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Sorry but I would trust these two’s opinions especially given that they’re both specialists in this trope.
Humanity is defined by its absurdity, and I am no exception.