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
Cut the plagiarized shit, use Wat's crimes but condense on Gregor... he shouldn't be part of the ">300 club", find his worst crimes, list them and don't make it a plot summary.
Also one thing that jumped at me... we've got the How to page for MB because that trope has a thousand parts with balances involved to make sure the character neither winds up coming across as a Smug Snake or a Villain Sue. Complete Monster is... make them bad enough to stand out and subvert their mitigating factors: I don't think a massive page detailing how many different types an author can make or delving into each subset of mitigating factors or potential heinous deeds to wax lyrical about what the coolest way to write them is necessary.
Just look at the How to Be a Complete Monster Just for fun page and it pretty well shows the core components are pretty straightforward. This just doesn't seem like a project worth pouring effort into, like the quotes morgue we once had suggested.
I mean it doesn’t have to be huge, but as a writer, there are actually quite a few ways to spin a CM in terms of making them stand out, subverting redeeming qualities, etc. It’s certainly not as complicated as MB and the page would never get anywhere near as long, but there’s a lot of ways to mess with this that you wouldn’t see on first glance, and the page is fun to maintain and read, so I don’t think it’s a huge issue.
The section is there - the treat with caution is empty, and the greats has Light, Freiza, and and Kefko - but I’m not attached to it, so it can go
The only reason I think at least keeping a treat with caution might be worth it is because Unintentionally Sympathetic and Unintentionally Unsympathetic are a thing but I can’t think of any monster iconic enough with either of those titles
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 21st 2021 at 10:59:46 AM
Here's my thing: how often have we had people fly off the handle because their favourite monster developed redeeming qualities or whine that someone wound up being a cookie-cutter villain when a troper personally felt they could have been taken in a much more complex direction. I really don't want a place to essentially categorize a litany of things people have taken umbrage with over the years because I don't see it ultimately doing anything but causing problems. There was once a post that listed monsters who subverted their Freudian Excuses and it had to be diced for likewise causing more arguments than bringing in interest for the direct merits of the list.
Cypher, Pwani, SoIaF rewrites
Not Them
Cut plagied condidates and the greats and treat with caution sections.
Welcome back Polar, altough I am in the same situation with Robert.
I am the one, I am the one, the godlike terror train, superior artificial brain, feel free to call me BlaineIf we are trimming Book!Gregor, how does this look ?
- Ser Gregor Clegane, "the Mountain that Rides", is a sadist in serving House Lannister and one of the most feared men in Westeros. As a man, he's rumored to have murdered his sister, father, and two wives, when he was a child twelve, he burned half of his younger brother Sandor's face when the latter played with one his toys. At seventeen, he dashed the infant Prince Aegon's head against a wall, then raped and murdered his mother, Princess Elia. While at at a tournament, Gregor murders one of his opponents, then tries to kill another and Sandor after losing a joust. Unleashed on the Riverlands, Clegane and his men rape and murder anyone who falls into their hands. At one point, for ten days, Gregor picks one person each day from a group of villagers to torture for information. After one villager volunteers to save her daughter, Clegane has the daughter tortured the next day to make sure the mother didn't leave anything out. He tortures Vargo Hoat, including cutting cuts strips of flesh from Hoat and feeding them to Hoat, before letting him die. He also has a girl gang raped for speaking when he wanted silence. In the same book, during a duel with Oberyn Martell, Princess Elia's brother, who asserts his the murder of his sister and her children to him, Clegane's only concern is that Oberyn got the order of events wrong, correcting him before brutally crushing Oberyn's skull.
Edited by Beast on Apr 21st 2021 at 8:16:32 AM
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."I got another quote for Azog the Defiler.
Edited by k410ren on Apr 21st 2021 at 11:14:03 AM
"I'll show you the Dark Side." CM actors and kills![]()
I miss typed. I'll fix it now.
- Ser Gregor Clegane, "the Mountain that Rides", is a sadist in serving House Lannister and one of the most feared men in Westeros. As a man, he's rumored to have murdered his sister, father, and two wives. When he was twelve, he burned half of his younger brother Sandor's face when the latter played with one his toys. At seventeen, he dashed the infant Prince Aegon's head against a wall, then raped and murdered his mother, Princess Elia. While at at a tournament, Gregor murders one of his opponents, then tries to kill another and Sandor after losing a joust. Unleashed on the Riverlands, Clegane and his men rape and murder anyone who falls into their hands. At one point, for ten days, Gregor picks one person each day from a group of villagers to torture for information. After one villager volunteers to save her daughter, Clegane has the daughter tortured the next day to make sure the mother didn't leave anything out. He tortures Vargo Hoat, including cutting cuts strips of flesh from Hoat and feeding them to Hoat, before letting him die. He also has a girl gang raped for speaking when he wanted silence. During a duel with Oberyn Martell, Princess Elia's brother, who asserts his the murder of his sister and her children to him, Clegane's only concern is that Oberyn got the order of events wrong, correcting him before brutally crushing Oberyn's skull.
Fixed.
Edited by Beast on Apr 21st 2021 at 8:25:00 AM
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."Welcome back Polar!
The plagiarism thing has me a bit concerned about when I did Antoine Sartain back in September 2017. When I wrote the section about Who/What, I took my character description I wrote on Villains Wiki, added details to it and then used that. Should I do the EP over because of that or is it not the same thing?
I was the one who created the character page and again, I was the one who wrote the description that I myself used, so that’s the down low.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Apr 21st 2021 at 9:11:17 AM

That's two different things. You're talking about the books; I was asking about the show.