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
to Berkley. My bad been very hyperfocused on this thread for the past few hours.
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That works. So:
- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Mr. Barron is a shapeshifting Peculiar who strives for immortality. Once a Peculiar who was part of a splinter group who sought to live outside the loops, Barron and his minions were mutated into the monstrous Hollowghasts as a result of a failed experiment involving stealing the essence of an ymbryne. Barron, however, finds an especially vile manner of regaining his humanity: raiding loops, killing all the Peculiars within—specifically children—and devouring their eyes. Barron repeats this process with several other loops, with the ultimate goal to find the loop of Ms. Peregrine and use her and several other ymbrynes to start the experiment anew. Once he does, Barron coerces Peregrine into coming with him under the threat of Jacob's life, and soon leaves all the children under her care to the mercy of the approaching Hollowghasts. Even the deaths of his closest minions don't sadden, faze, or even annoy him in the slightest.
Edited by ACW on Apr 26th 2021 at 6:40:52 AM
Please pay tribute to your Overlord, if you haven't already
.
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It seemed like a few missed. Sorry.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Apr 26th 2021 at 7:31:18 AM
Sky, almost everyone who's been here today has been voting on Berkley. We're not ignoring the EP.
for Cassandra Berkley.
I haven't done too well in this thread, but let me try again.
As a side note, did this thread sign off on the existing examples of Heralds of Valdemar? They really don't look like the work of this thread and Ma'ar/Mornelithe Falconsbane looks like a borderline ZCE.
Anyway,
What's the Work?
Closer to Home, part of the Heralds of Valdemar series. It's a lighthearted tale of a courting season in Valdemar's capital of Haven, where two Feuding Families come to court at the same time seeking matches for their offspring amidst the bustle of a festive Midwinter season. Amidst social maneuvering by the family elders and street brawls between the young men, as marriages are arranged for the benefit of the Crown and the Lords, a love story for the ages blooms as Violetta, the youngest daughter of Lord Leverance of Chendlar spots the only son of Kaltar of Raeylen, the handsome and eligible Brand.
Who's the villain, and what has he done?
Brand, the son of Lord Kaltar. Throughout most of the story, he is shown to be a gentlemanly young man who takes well to Herald Mags' tutelage. He is well-loved among the rest of the court, and while he has a penchant for a certain whorehouse, that's not a sign of bad character among young lordlings; he pays his debts and treats his women well. Even Lord Leverance considers him a good man, and goes to bat for him against his hot-blooded nephew Talbot (one of the prime jerks who wanted to restart the fighting). When he receives Violetta's letter of love, he at first pretends that he never saw it, and later dances with Violetta and promises her his undying love, in no time at all winning her heart and her bed. He is, in short, a charmer.
When the King commands him to marry Violetta's elder sister to end the feud, promising him an estate of his own, he and Violetta run off from his betrothal feast to get married. King's Own Herald Amily chases after them because things have been going wrong (and because he threw Violetta's little dog into a snowbank). Under Truth Spell, he reveals his feelings for Violetta: Absolutely nothing. She's "a pair of legs and an empty head" to him. He'd gotten her into bed before he ever thought of marriage (this is a setting where ruining a woman is Serious Business), and only chose her over Aleniel because he found her easier to manipulate. And so he'd planned to sneak off with Violetta to get married while his band of hired killers murdered everyone at the betrothal feast, including both the Chendlar and Raeylen families. With them all dead, he'd inherit all three estates, and he planned to control Violetta through manipulation, get her pregnant, and then use the wealth he got by marrying her and killing their families to purchase the affections of a whore who had been entirely out of his price range, and many more besides. After he's killed, it's revealed that his father did die from being drugged at the feast before the killers came.
Mitigating Factors?
The man's a psychopath. He's infatuated with the prostitute Lelage, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's not any kind of love we recognize as a mitigator Even if it was, he's trying to marry another woman on false pretenses so he can have her, and his misogynistic and callous attitude toward Violetta means that there's no way any feelings he has for Lelage can make him less of a monster. And while he blames his father, and his father is legitimately a Jerkass, there's no history of abuse, just resentment on Brand's part that he didn't get everything he wanted when he wanted it. He cares about no one but himself, and if he ever holds back, it's because he's trying to charm people. No mitigation.
Heinousness?
Well, he can't compete with some of the other Valdemar monsters. I'm going to say that he doesn't have to, though. Closer to Home is a smaller-scale story, and Brand is not a world-threatening supervillain; he's the villain of a Romeo and Juliet story. In that context, he's a cad who committed rape by deception and potentially ruined a young woman's life, a patricide, an attempted mass murderer, and an utter misogynist who thinks of women only as toys and tools. Within the resources available to him, you can't get much worse.
Now, a sub-theme of the book is a Deconstruction of The Good Kingdom, and how misogynistic aristocracy and Double Standards lead to sexual predation, but Brand is a significant step beyond the evil of an "ordinary" noble predator and he cannot be seen as a mere example of the system.
Verdict:
Yes, he qualifies.
Edited by Ramidel on Apr 26th 2021 at 3:26:53 AM
Here's the apparently unnaproved candidates, for anyone curious:
- Complete Monster:
- Ma'ar/Mornelithe Falconsbane started as being a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but quickly became the Big Bad, and the final showdown between him and the Big Good Urtho caused the Cataclysm, which was so powerful that it actually echoed through time. Though defeated, he didn't actually die, as he had set up a Grand Theft Me so that he could take over the body of any his descendants once they started showing signs of magical ability. Falconsbane kept doing this over the centuries until finally the main characters in the Mage Winds trilogy figured out what was going on and destroyed him.
- Ancar kills his father in order to take the throne of Hardorn, tortures Queen's Own Talia (who was there as part of a diplomatic mission) more for kicks than to get information out of her, and then has his mages mind-control the conscripted troops so that they'll fight. He then drains his land to further power his spells, and kills off even his distant cousins to prevent anyone from overthrowing him.
- Master Pieters puts children as young as four and five to work in a mine. He forces them to sleep in a basement, feeds them so little that they supplemented their diet by stealing the pig slop whenever they could, and is known to beat the children to a bloody pulp with a mallet in front of the rest of the child workers should he deem it 'necessary' for control of them.
- Hadanelith, a minor villain who appears in The White Gryphon, possesses the Gifts of Empathy and Mindhealing, but uses them to serve his own sadistic desires rather than to aid people. When first discovered, he is found to have been using his gifts to warp the minds of women until they live only to serve him in slavery, sexually and otherwise. He is exiled from the city of White Gryphon under the relatively loose laws and customs of their society. Rather than die in the wilderness, he makes his way south to the Haighlei kingdoms and is recruited by the Evil Chancellor to assassinate high ranking members of their society in order to frame the delegation from White Gryphon. In doing so, he is permitted to indulge his sadistic fantasies and accordingly tortures his victims before killing them.
Also, does he have any meaningful interactions with the prostitute? How does he treat her himself?
Edited by DoodSlayer136 on Apr 26th 2021 at 4:40:35 AM

@Sky: The Cassandra everyone is voting for is Berkley. Yes to her