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
Roque, Everett, & Jack
Alright, because no one else is doing it, I'll make this placeholder writeup.
- Rockababy
: Brutus Ophidian, a seemingly affable government agent seeking to give a safe haven to Buttons, in reality is the sadistic head of Helix Genomics, where he tortures aliens in his care while selling their blood to the highest bidder, doing the same with Shifty when he first landed on Earth. After Shifty sees him strapping a shock collar to Buttons, Brutus detonates a tracker on his car and leaves him to die in the explosion. When Shifty and his friends break into Helix, Brutus forces his son into experimenting on Buttons, and when Buttons escapes, prepares to "tie up loose ends" and kill Shifty's friends so he can have him and Buttons for himself, with Brutus showing sadistic glee at this prospect while guilt tripping Shifty into getting his friends into trouble and forcing him to take responsibility for his cruel actions. It's later revealed that he plans to sell the alien blood to both the US and USSR governments, hoping to deliberately provoke both sides into engaging in nuclear warfare, while he watches the fallout from the stars. Enhancing himself with alien blood, Brutus fights Shifty and rips his tail off, saying it's like how he ripped the tails of lizards in his childhood. After his work is ruined, Brutus holds a gun to Buttons' head, and after failing, attempts to shoot and kill Shifty as revenge for not getting what he wants.
Edited by nwotyzal on Sep 14th 2020 at 8:47:50 AM
'Yes' to Roque and Jack, abstaining on Everett and Celia barring more info.
Speaking of The Losers? My write-up for Max (still one of my favorite movie villains) is lacking a bit, so here's a newer, better flowing, shorter rewrite.
Original:
- The Losers: Max is a high-ranking American government operative, whose ultimate goal is securing American, and by extension his own, power. Max orders a black ops team, the titular "Losers," to target a Bolivian drug lord who found out Max's plans' compound for an airstrike, not caring about the fact that there are dozens of children inside. The Losers save the children, however the kids are murdered when Max orders The Losers' helicopter, believing them to be on board, destroyed. Max commissions a group of scientists to build him sonic weapons called "Snukes," and plans on selling them to groups he knows will use them to start wars. Max regularly kills anyone who inconveniences him, from shooting a woman for stumbling while shading him from the sun, to murdering an entire group of his own soldiers for knowing too much about his plans. Acquiring the Snukes, Max sets one to destroy L.A., kills all of the scientists who made the weapon, plans to frame them for the city's destruction, and, when confronted by The Losers, tosses the remote deactivator into the ocean to give himself time to escape, abandoning his allies in the process.
Rewrite:
- The Losers: Max is a high-ranking government operative, seeking to secure his power base and bring the world into a new order of his design. Opening the film by betraying and trying to kill the titular "Losers" team for outliving their usefulness, Max endangers then murders dozens of children due to his own trigger-happy negligence, after which he frames the Losers for the crime and marks them for death. Kidnapping and forcing a group of scientists to develop sonic weapons capable of leveling entire cities, Max dubs the weapons "Snukes" and plans to sell them on the black market so as to kickstart wars across the world, after which himself and his government will take control in the name of "order." Killing his own assistant just for stumbling while shading him from the sun and regularly threatening the lives of his own Dragon and other soldiers, Max eventually targets a Snuke at Los Angeles, executes the hostage scientists, and, when confronted by the vengeful Losers, tosses the Snuke remote deactivator into the ocean to give himself time to flee.
Yes to Roque and Jack. Abstain on Everett and Celia until we get more information.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup threadI've been sitting on this candidate for a while because I've feared this is going to be contentious, but lately I've felt some cautious optimism. So here goes nothing.
Full disclosure up front, this candidate has been discussed before, but prior discussion stalled out with most people abstaining.
What is the work?
The infamous 1988 Chinese movie Men Behind the Sun, set in World War Two. The film examines the crimes of the Japanese bio-warfare group Unit 731, and its leader, Doctor Shiro Ishii.
What has he done?
At the start of the film it's established that Shiro Ishii had been demoted and reassigned elsewhere after allegations of corruption. However, owing to Japan's desperation as WWII is turning against them, they see fit to re-instate him. Ishii quickly has the man who reported him sent to Japan's southern front to go fight against the United States; a virtual death sentence. Deciding that experiments with corpses is too slow and ineffective, Ishii proposes using live subjects.
To this end, thousands of Chinese and a handful of Russian civilians kidnapped and imprisoned at the compound, where they are referred to as marutas - the Japanese word for "log" - to dehumanize them. Ishii authorizes and oversees a litany of gruesome and often fatal medical experiments on them, including:
- Freezing the limbs of a young woman and young man to study the effects of extreme frostbite.
- Firing artillery into a crowd of restrained marutas to study the injuries the explosives would cause.
- Subjecting a mother and her child to chlorine gas to see how long it would take for them to suffocate.
- Sticking a man in a pressure chamber and increasing the pressure until he dies.
These particulars aside, Ishii and his team work around the clock to create the most effective bio-weapons and develop an effective delivery system for them. In their trials, which kill many marutas, Ishii's team creates a strain of bubonic plagues 60 times deadlier than its natural variant, but still need a way to transmit it. When Ishii sexually assaults a geisha in his private time, and she knocks over a ceramic bowl, he realizes the potential to put plague infested fleas in ceramic bombs and drop them from airplanes. To test his theory out, he has his subordinates arrange a test of the ceramic bombs while he's out on other business.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose), events could not have come at a worse time for him and the unit. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are bombed and the Soviets declare war on Japan, and the planes assigned to the test never make it off the ground. This inspires the marutas assembled for the experiment to rebel, and after a prolonged chase in which members of the unit hunt down the escapees, all except one is killed off and the experiment is in shambles.
Knowing what Japan's defeat likely means for him and the unit, Ishii tries to have all the unit members and their families commit suicide in order to take the secret of Unit 731 to the grave, after encountering resistance to the idea from his staff, abandons this position. Ishii successfully, however, order the entire compound destroyed, and all the remaining marutas are shot, gassed, or burned. When a subordinate desperately tries to save some of the data getting destroyed, Ishii coldly shoots him to death.
Before getting on the train to depart Manchuria and return to Japan, Ishii warns the other unit members to never disclose what happened at the compound, under threat of death. The epilogue reveals that Ishii was given a pardon and implies he supervised the usage of bioweapons in the Korean War
, and lists the death toll from his experiments and cover-up at three thousand.
Heinous Standard?
As the Big Bad, sets it, and soars right over it. The experiments rack up a huge death toll, inflict untold suffering...yeah, gets a pass.
Mitigating Factors?
None. Ishii's few moments of sane judgement stem from Pragmatic Villainy - he chides some of his subordinates for killing marutas unnecesarily, but only because he needs them for his bio-weapons tests at a time when Japan is on the brink of losing the war. He forgoes having his subordinates commit mass suicide only after it becomes clear it would be too difficult to convince them. Otherwise, pass.
Is the movie one note Torture Porn? Does it have a plot?
And here we come to the reason this work was largely avoided the first time.
I'd go so far as to argue that the entire arc with Ishii racing against time to develop enough bio-warfare capability to turn the tide of war in Japan's favor is sufficient plot in and of itself, but I know many may not see it that way. The thing is, that's not the only plotline.
The film also centers on a group of Japanese Youth Corps members who struggle with the morality of the actions going on at the facility and their role in it, questioning the logic their adult supervisors dole out. Their increasing horror and resistance to the project is given a fair amount of screentime. There's also small group of marutas who agonize over what the best way to oppose their captors would be, divided between one man who wants open confrontation, and another who records the events as best he can with the hope that they will be able to expose Unit 731 and get outside help. Both men try their respective strategies, though in the end it's largely for naught.
So all in all I, personally, feel the film gets a pass here too.
As one last aside though, I'd argue that for the film's more graphic scenes are pretty much the only way you can really depict the historical atrocities that actually occurred. The movie doesn't even depict the worst of it, to the point I'd argue the Wikipedia page for Unit 731
is more disturbing than anything shown in the movie.
Final Verdict?
If we can agree that the movie has a plot, then I see no reason to give anything other than an
.
I'm going to get some sleep now, so if he gets voted up I won't be able to do the write-up for a few hours.
Okay, might as well get up my EP for this series now that the ball is rolling. This one is from the Flanaganverse—Critica already got up Tennyson (although that writeup in the drafts badly needs to be trimmed) and I got up a villain from the sister series Brotherband, so let's go to Flanagan's most popular series Ranger's Apprentice. This one comes from the third book, The Icebound Land—enter Lord Deparnieux.
Who is Deparnieux? What has he done?
A warlord who rules over a sizable pocket of land in the lawless country of Gallica, Deparnieux introduces himself barging into a tavern the Rangers have arrived upon and immediately harassing and attempting to provoke our hero Halt into a fight. Deparnieux just seems to be a high-strung jackass at first who backs off from Halt (with a little bit of prompting from a nocked arrow) but we learn Deparnieux was purposefully attempting to goad Halt into a confrontation in order to have an excuse to kill him.
Why? That's Deparnieux's shtick. Deparnieux is a thuggish, petty sadist who doesn't bother pretending his rule is anything but one of fear, making up pretend excuses solely so he can terrorize people with impunity. At best, people are tortured for any reason Deparnieux can think of. At worst, when Deparnieux captures the heroes and force-marches them to his castle, we see a long line of innocent people Deparnieux has caged up and left outside to be slowly pecked to death by birds "for displeasing me," including an unfortunate shmuck from the tavern who did nothing but laugh when he shouldn't have.
We see more instances of Deparnieux's random cruelty every subsequent chapter he appears. Deparnieux orders a cook punished for serving the vegetables cold and forces a servant to think of a punishment—the servant comes up with the idea to flog her. Deparnieux orders the servant flogged, and the cook caged up for the birds. The next chapter Deparnieux is confronted by a young man whose elderly parents Deparnieux randomly murdered; Deparnieux sadistically toys around with the kid for a bit in a rigged duel before spearing him through the neck. Halt finally ends the bastard by tricking him into another duel that ends with Halt putting an arrow through Deparnieux's heart.
Any mitigating factors?
Where Deparnieux lacks in Tennyson and Morgarath's body count, he makes up in sheer sadism. Deparnieux is one of the most pointlessly sadistic characters in Flanagan's entire extended universe; he tyrannizes, tortures and murders dozens of people for nothing but his own amusement and he's never once written with anything that doesn't make him out to be a disgusting Smug Snake.
I'd say the only possibly keepers in the series otherwise would be Big Bad Morgarath and maybe the child slaver from the first novel, but Deparnieux is so obviously worse than the majority of the series' villains his qualification is inarguable.
Conclusion?
Keeper.
to Ishii and Deparnieux
Has anyone here seen The Report? It's a dramatized story of the investigation and outing of the CIA's brutal torture tactics following 9/11, and I have been wondering if the two primary contributors and masterminds of the torture, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, could possibly be contenders. They are shown as the ones the CIA contracts out to come up with a variety of really horrible torture techniques, which Mitchell and Jessen personally carry out as well as cause the widespread usage of the torture, leading to hundreds of people in CIA custody being subjected to the horrors.
The CIA as a whole are the main villains, and Mitchell and Jessen's superiors are condoning their actions, but Mitchell and Jessen are nonetheless the ones who come up with, advocate for, and even carry out the new torture methods, and all pretty much just to make money.
Does anyone think they might be worth a proposal? The main reason I am asking is because the movie is obviously very connected to the real life, and Mitchell and Jessen's real world counterparts are still alive and kicking, so it might be too topically insensitive.
Ravok: Please add the rewrite to the Drafts.
Nwot: Same goes for your writeup.
Eh...sure to Roque, if BARELY. So neither of the Max juniors count, but what about Max Senior?
Sure to Jack...a bit iffy, but since the good guys win, I'll allow it.
Ishii...I'm more hesitant on him. Abstain for now.
Sure to Deparnieux.
Easy yes to Deparnieux
Probably one of the worst Black Knight types we've gotten in the thread
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

@Lightysnake: Noted. If I've ever come across as unfriendly to newcomers, my apologies for that and I'll try to be more helpful to them.
Here's my writeup:
Edited by DrUnknown on Sep 14th 2020 at 8:15:39 AM