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
Too bad Dark Empire!Palpatine may be a clone
Either way, if it's him at his most vile the writeup may need changing (actually, I may do that anyway. Right now it's a Wall of Text; also, a few more Pot Holes I wanna dig.
Oh, and
for Stanley. Yeesh indeed.
edited 6th May '14 3:42:48 AM by ACW
Something along those lines, yeah, though I think it was at least partly his own creation.
Also, it occurs to me that now that the Clone Wars has shown us how clones vary and develop personalities independent of their template, Palpatine's actions are much more horrifying than they were when EU writers couldn't seem to make up their minds on whether clones were soulless abominations or not.
In the EU, Palpatine mastered a technique that allowed his spirit to survive physical death. After Endor, his soul fled to his throne world, Byss, where he occupied a clone body. In the series, his clones were all destroyed and when he tried to possess baby Anakin, another Jedi performed a Heroic Sacrifice by intercepting him, being possessed by Palpatine and died with Palpatine's spirit trapped in him, taking them both to the grave.
The clones he used, however, were just mindless meat suits. Nothing like the troops
edited 6th May '14 6:08:32 AM by Lightysnake
Ok a rewrite wtih all the information lighty gave me:
- Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious. Throughout the films, we find out he is behind almost all the bad things that happen—he engineered the invasion of his own home planet, and by Episode II started the Clone Wars and used the start of the war to gain considerable emergency powers. He gets worse throughout the Clone Wars, starting with planning on performing experiments and ''possibly lethal surgery'' on infants that he ordered Cad Bane to capture for him, while in a red-tinted laboratory that even the most mad Mad Scientist would be afraid to work in, over a lava lake on Mustafar. Later when he, as Darth Sidious, faces his old apprentice, Darth Maul, he takes great delight in murdering his brother right in front of him, and afterwards, sadistically tortures him with Force lightning, while hinting at a Fate Worse than Death for Maul. In the Lost Missions(season 6), he has Fives drugged and rendered insane in order to prevent him from telling the truth about Order 66 which led to the latter's death. At the end of the war, he successfully turns Anakin to the Dark Side by exploiting his fear about Padme's death, and afterwards nearly annihilated the Jedi Order including the children, and killed and disposed his loyal Separatist allies when he had no use for them anymore and made the Republic into a fascist dictatorship ruling by fear and using planet-destroying superweapons like the Death Star against anything with the idea of dissenting. He only has loyality to himself—it is implied in Episode VI that he treated Darth Vader as expandable when Luke defeated him and wanted to make Luke his apprentice instead while leaving Vader to die. When Luke refuses, Palpatine then gleefully blasts him with force lightning until he is destroyed by Vader through the latter's redemption.
- He manages to top himself in the Legends canonnote as well. It is revealed that in Star Wars: Darth Plagueis he killed his own parents and siblings, and is incapable of feeling regret when committing heinous actions and various misdemeanors—such as when he ended up crashing his landspeeder and killing two people without any remorse on his part, and, in fact, was extremely glad that he got away with breaking the law and insensitively decided to reveal that instant that he wants to become a racer. In addition, when Darth Tenebrous, a Sith Lord, foresaw Palpatine's murder of Plagueis upon his death and possession of Plagueis after the latter betrayed him, he was noticeably horrified at not only Plagueis' murder at the hands of Palpatine, but at how evil Palpatine is, implying that Palpatine was so evil, that even the Sith, who are infamous for committing various crimes with The Dark Side, were repulsed by him. And as Emperor, he was known to have personally destroyed entire populations and single handedly razed entire cities that were suspected to conspire against him. His cloning attempts in Dark Empire leads to his vilest actions yet, not only by converting Luke to the dark side but also causes havoc through the use of devastating force storms and the planet-destroying Galaxy Gun. When his last clone starts to decay, he tried to posses Anakin Solo and was only stopped by another Jedi's intervention that led to his final death.
A few tweeks:
Now that Willbyr's back, are Harry Potter and Power Rangers Monsters ready to go?
edited 6th May '14 9:03:30 AM by ACW
Re: Longshanks: I don't think Historical Villain Upgrade was ever really the issue (and is, as said, completely irrelevant given that we judge the fictional characters, not their real life counterparts). The only arguments I found that seem to have been offered were 1) that Longshanks only does evil through his minions, which is a flawed argument with countless CMs who delegate orders to do bad things and incorrect as he personally murders someone onscreen, and 2) that Longshanks is just a Jerkass who doesn't do enough onscreen, which is probably due to unfamiliarity with the movie. With five upvotes he seems like a keep though.
I'll add the Max Zorin rewrite to the James Bond page. Le Chiffre was outvoted, if I'm not mistaken.
I literally found this out just yesterday, but there was apparently a direct sequel to Cabin by the Lake that featured Stanley again, Return to Cabin By The Lake. I watched it to be sure of his qualification, and I have no doubts he still hits all the marks, as he only gets worse in the sequel.
After his killing spree at Summit Lake of young women is uncovered and the authorities believe him to have died despite him actually being a Karma Houdini, they want to make a movie about his exploits. He's pissed off that they're butchering the script he originally wrote, and infiltrates the movie set as an "expert" on Stanley after murdering a DP, where he gradually starts killing most of the crew. This includes drowning several more people, killing someone with a boat engine after drowning him fails, attempted electrocution, and burying someone alive after nearly blowing his head off with a firecracker. He also starts killing some Asshole Victims, but they still portray him as monumentally evil. They also make a point of defying Freudian Excuse — Stanley scoffs when the writers try to write an Abusive Parents plotline to explain his depravities, and he later points out that there's no real reason his "friend" Stanley became a Serial Killer, he just likes to hear people beg for their lives and fuel his massive ego. By the end of the sequel, his crimes are famous the world over and he again stages his own death to become a Karma Houdini again. These two movies (release dates 2000 and 2001) seem to be following on the Scream craze with "self-aware" meta-fictional horror movies — they're Deconstructive Parodies, but still feature heinous villains played completely straight.
edited 6th May '14 10:51:42 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"Looking at Monster.Star Wars, I have a question about Dr. Evazan from Galaxy of Fear. Is he really heinous enough to qualify? All the entry mentions is two victims and that really doesn't strike me as enough to qualify, especially when compared with the Big Bad, Borborygmus Gog, who's listed as doing far worse. Also, Gog's entry ends with the sentence: "And then there's Kiva." So... who's Kiva and why is it mentioned in Gog's entry? There's no context at all.
To elaborate, Evazan was a serial killer and mad scientist who was responsible for tons of nasty crimes, including murder, human experimentation and trying to put his buddy Ponda Baba (The guy whose arm Obi-Wan lopped off) into the body of a senator from his planet, even though it'd erase the guy himself. He tried creating a Zombie Apocalypse and was an unrepentant child murderer to boot.
As for Kiva...Gog was the second in command to scientist Mammon Hoole when the empire funded their research on Kiva. Gog realized their research would kill the planet, but concealed the fact from Hoole, writing off the death of Kiva as no big deal...some of its inhabitants survived as tortured vengeful wraiths, with Hoole taking ALL the blame. Yeah, Gog's kind of a dick.
I do have one possible thing on Stanley though...the heroine of the first movie and his one victim to escape, Mallory...Stanley kidnaps women and holds them in a cell in his house to observe them to get inspiration for his scripts. He leaves them with a marker to write on the walls. Most write things like "Thou shalt not kill", frightened messages, etc.
Mallory writes "YOU CAN'T SCARE ME" in giant letters on the wall. When Stanley is erasing all of it after his killing spree, he he pauses and erases everything but that. he seems to...respect Mallory in a way, but I don't think it's a redeeming trait.
edited 6th May '14 11:39:39 AM by Lightysnake
I don't think its necessary to edit the Star Wars entrys like that, not at all. Just because Disney thinks its cool to screw around, we don't have to edit every friggin' last write-up. Its good as it is.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianAlright, is Saturday morning too soon for the swaps of HP and Power Rangers?
edited 6th May '14 3:34:42 PM by ACW
I agree that Stanley's interactions with the Final Girl is not a redeeming trait. He just seems to be looking for some girl who will put up a decent fight after he's bored that all the previous ones were timid. He notably tries to plant a Forceful Kiss on an obviously terrified Mallory in the climax... just as he's about to drown her and his agent.
Return plays with this in the same way with a female scriptwriter who tries to "understand" the 'late' Stanley. Initially it seems to be leading up to some sort of bizarre "you poor murderer, you" hook-up, but then he kidnaps her and locks her in a dungeon before revealing his true identity. She plays to his ego by pretending to like his murderous acts in an attempt to escape, only for him to force her at gunpoint to watch him kill two people and when that fails, take her with him to become the centerpiece of his newest underwater graveyard. She ends up acknowledging that he's simply evil and deserves to die. He'll listen to anyone who acknowledges his work or gives him good sport.
edited 6th May '14 1:33:36 PM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"Update on the new MLP villain's identity from the latest preview (for those keeping track): Turns out it really is Tirek. I'll admit, I squee'd internally. Still very doubtful we're dealing with an actual CM, of course. I'll give my judgement ASAP on Saturday.
edited 6th May '14 6:13:01 PM by LordXavius

Random question regarding the Robo Cop entries. Is Dick Jones as heinous as Boddicker, Cain, and McDaggett if he only kills one person? I don't know if this was discussed before but I couldn't find anything in the search function.
edited 5th May '14 11:02:35 PM by TVRulezAgain