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
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As a heads-up, your Heinous Standard section is a little lacking as it doesn't talk about the numerous acts of evil done by other characters in the series and compare the slave merchant's actions to them. This is especially important as the series has no shortage of vile people in it.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 15th 2021 at 5:02:15 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Compare the physical actions of the candidate with those of other villains.
I.E. What do they do which is physically different than the actions of other villains? Character emotion does not factor into heinousness.
As stated below, do they do enough or more with what they have to stand out?
Edit: Moved to a new post.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Jun 15th 2021 at 8:20:43 AM
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Something to remember about the heinous standard: it's not just "is what this charater does considered evil?" it's also "how does this character's actions measure up to others?"
And
is correct in that how Flum feels towards other heinous characters has no bearing on the heinous standard.
I will mention that the effort post doesn't mention the horrendous acts committed by the Church of Origin, both directly and indirectly. However, the Church of Origin also has quite a bit more resources than the slave merchant as they are one of the leading powers of the setting.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 15th 2021 at 5:15:32 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Well one of the rules was about individuals and organizations. Organizations aren't supposed to count in the Complete Monster category, so I thought we were only supposed to compare to individuals like Dein. The Church of Origin does a lot of bad stuff, but they are an organization. The Slave Merchant is an individual who has a lower amount of resources, and what he does with those resources is quite reprehensible.
Consider the following:
If the setting has a lot of murderers and rapists, a run of the mill serial killer, spree killer, or serial rapist will need a very large body count in order to stand out, but a mad scientist, mad doctor, pimp or slaver may not need as high of a body count provided that their crimes are unique for the setting. Additionally, a government official needs to have either large scale atrocities, extreme personal cruelty, or both, and only the latter is not a guarantee.
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The organization itself cannot be a Complete Monster, only individual members within it, but the organization's acts of evil still contribute to the heinous standard.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 15th 2021 at 5:22:40 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Ok...here is an excerpt from a past effortpost of mine, for Fitz, AKA "Doc Holiday" from the Kovac & Liska series; it should give you an idea about how to discuss heinousness:
Heinousness?
Body count of 8 and one survivor spread out across various holidays. Prolonged torture and rape.
More specifically, the torture involves stabbing and carving with sharp tools, cigarette burns, binding, broken ribs, and death by blunt force trauma.
Other suspects pale in comparison from both a body count and a methodology standpoint.
- Ashes to Ashes: The Cremator tortures and burns 4-5 women to death (albeit for shorter periods than Fitz), and 3 survivors, but has more resources than Fitz, as a wealthy advocate for trauma victims.
- Dust to Dust: Other than one cop who beats someone to death, the dirty cops do not have a very high body count individually of each other.
- Prior Bad Acts: Other than murdering his family, assaulting a judge, and resisting arrest, the antagonist does not do much. The framed suspect kills two after escaping. A rogue cop commits a few vigilante murders, as well.
- "The 1st Victim": Doc has already tortured, raped and murdered 5 girls by the end of the story.
- The 9th Girl: Doc now has a body count of 8, and attempts to raise it to 9, while the people who framed him molested one girl and then killed her.
- Cold, Cold Heart: The book flashes back to Doc tormenting his sole survivor. In contrast Casey's killer only has a body count of a pregnant woman (Casey) and 2 attempted.
- The Bitter Season: The suspect kills his foster family, and threatens his half sister's life in order to goad his mom into killing him.
As you can see, Fitz is pretty much the worst of the lot.
No prob, Lighty.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Jun 15th 2021 at 8:40:13 AM
Ok. I'm just going to ask point blank.
- What does Dein do, and with what resources?
- What does Satil do, and with what resources?
- What does Mother do, and with what resources?
- What does Echidna do, and with what resources?
- What does the Slave Merchant do, with what resources, and how is what he does physically any different than what each individual does?
Edited by SkyCat32 on Jun 15th 2021 at 10:08:51 AM
Leaning yes to the Slave Merchant, Satils and the resurrected Satils for now, pending further information on the HS.
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)As I mentioned in the Slave Merchant post, Dein basically has control over the West District of the Capital. He uses his charisma to get men to follow him. To expand on that, he uses his influence to gain money which in turn gets him more followers including members of the Army. When Flum gets his men arrested, he sends men to attack her and Milkit. When Flum kills those men, he continues using his men to attempt to sabotage her. When that fails, he utilizes the men directly loyal to him, and he uses his money to bribe members of the army to hunt down and attack Flum while also sending some of his men to destroy her house. He wishes to crush Flum to make it clear that he is the one in control of the West District, and he will not tolerate anyone who stands up to him like Flum.
For Satils, she is another Complete Monster candidate. I'll post her up, and you'll see all the stuff she does on there. To sum it up in a sentence, she runs a lot of legitimate businesses as a front to help her get away with her unsavory activities.
Mother received Origin Crystals, and he experimented on Children to make them into living weapons. While he may have his own goal in mind, he is also doing it for the sake of the Church of Origin, so he has his orders. He removed their hearts and replaced them with Origin Cores. Most of the experiments were successful, specifically the second generation. Ink is technically a defective first generation, but he doesn't kill her because he is able to get some use out of her powers despite the fact she can't control them properly. He even lets her live when she rejects him and wishes to live a normal life.
Echidna receives Origin cores to create monsters that can be useful to Origin. They are attempting to wipe out the Demons for the sake of Origin and supposedly for humanity as well. Some of Echidna's experiments go haywire and go on rampages. As I mentioned before, in some of those cases, it could be viewed as an accident similar to in Jurassic Park when all the safety precautions went haywire. One example being in Volume 01/Episode 02, where Flum and Sara find an entire laboratory filled with scientists who were killed by the Ogres that went out of control.
The Slave Merchant is one man who doesn't have the backing of the Church of Origin or anything like that. He has a lot of money and apparently a fairly decent amount of facilities to contain and smuggle slaves. Additionally, he is able to convert innocent people into being slaves as well. With the limited resources he has, he commits deplorable actions. He willingly commits massacres of slaves he deems to be useless while enjoying the show. If the slaves aren't eaten alive, he tricks them into picking up a cursed sword to melt into a puddle, or he takes pleasure in killing them himself. If he had more resources, he'd do even worse than he did. Unlike some of the other bad guys, he is fine with getting his hands dirty personally.
Edited by Knowledgeseeker on Jun 15th 2021 at 7:25:35 AM
If I remember correctly, Echidna really doesn't care that her chimera are rampaging around. She's certainly made no effort to reign them in, and there's nothing suggesting she is unaware that they're loose in the world.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 15th 2021 at 7:40:20 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Take care Aman! hope you get better!
to Breen. From what I know of him he's a classical narcissist who'll spin every bit of his self-centered actions as something altruistic, and his high level of education helps him say it in ways that almost sound reasonable when you're not desperate for survival (where other concerns make it seem eminently reasonable).
From the context of his actions it's quite clear his saving of humanity is mainly for his benefit - namely, having control over the cowed population of a whole world, and even then only long enough for him to find an out for himself; he ultimately doesn't care about humanity's survival at all (he does absolutely nothing to mitigate the slow genocide by lack of reproduction facing humanity; an actual WIE would at least try to do something about that). And his final attempt to cajole the combine so he can leave humanity behind (even though by then he's likely outlived his usefulness) is a classic narcissist play (convincing someone who has no use for them they can still be useful) and his "You need me!" is not only this but a typical example of narcissists' constant need for validation combined with a last-ditch attempt be saved.
(Yes, I have had unpleasant first-person IRL experience dealing with a malignant narcissist. He was my mother's boyfriend for 25 years. Breen is smarter and less choleric but the similarities are striking, including the arrogance when they think they have the upper hand and the desperate bargaining and cajoling when they realize they're in deep shit).
Besides by the time Half-Life 3 comes out the Sun will have swallowed the Earth as it turns into a red giant.
Leaning
for the Slave Merchant and Satils for now, though her original and resurrected versions don't seem different enough to warrant being treated as separate entries IMO.
Edited by Paireon on Jun 15th 2021 at 10:39:31 AM
I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.

After reading the feedback, I am sorry for making the original post too long. I will separate it into parts. However, I am glad to see some people are already voting in favor of the Slave Merchant and Satils.
To answer someone's question, when someone is resurrected using the Origin Core, they are both the same person and not the same person. They can have the same memories as their original counterpart, but they can develop slight differences to their original living counterpart. There are a few lines that address this in the Light Novel. One other resurrected person, Tia, admitted that she might not technically be the same person Tia her husband Gladio once knew because she has different mannerisms.
///
Anyway, here it the shortened post featuring only the Slave Merchant. Once again, I'm really sorry for before.
Since today is 06/15/2021, it has been two weeks since the physical release of Roll Over And Die Volume 03.
What is the Work?
Roll Over and Die is a Yuri, Dark Fantasy Light Novel series starring Flum Apricot and her companion Milkit. The setting of the story takes place in a world where everyone is born with an Affinity. These Affinities can be Common Affinities, such as Water or Fire, or a Rare Affinity, such as Hero, Nature, or Reversal. The story begins with Flum originally being a ‘Chosen One’ to be part of the Hero’s Party to save humanity and defeat the Demon Lord. Unfortunately for her, she has the rare affinity known as ‘Reversal’ which causes all her stats to be 0, so it seems like a useless affinity because no one knows what it does.
One of Flum’s teammates betrays her and sells her into slavery. She is branded with the mark of a slave on her cheek. However, the slaver deems her as useless and decides to feed her and other slaves to ghouls. For extra sadistic pleasure, he leaves the slaves a cursed weapon to make it look like he is giving them a fighting chance, but the sword will melt the body of anyone who touches it.
When Flum decides to take her chances with the sword, it heals her instead of melting her. Flum realizes her Affinity ‘Reversal’ allows her to wield cursed weapons. Afterwards, Flum kills the ghouls and the slaver. Flum takes the only survivor, Milkit, with her, and she resolves to forge a new life for herself and Milkit. That is only the beginning of their adventures. Along the way, they gain allies, such as Sara, Eterna, and Gladio, while also encountering new enemies, such as Dein, Satils, and factions from the Church of Origin. The two of them will need each other if they hope to survive in this Dark Fantasy world, so they can live a new life together.
A majority of the series takes place in the Capital, but there are parts where Flum’s adventures take her outside the capital. For context of this entry, Volume 03 partly takes place in the village of Sheol, also known as the ‘Village of Salvation’. In this village, the Necromancy Team for the Church of Origin, headed by have used Origin Cores to bring people back to life. They live there along with heir still living family members.
I would like to present characters who I believe deserve the label of Complete Monster. There is no doubt in my mind that they deserved to be considered this. Additionally, the storylines for these characters have been completed, and outside of a flashback or a dream, they will never appear again. They are:
• Unnamed Slave Merchant
• Satils Francois – Original Human Form
• Satils Francois – Post Resurrection
Candidate # 1: Unnamed Slave Merchant.
For the Unnamed Slave Merchant, he is the Starter Villain of the story, and he is the Small Role, Big Impact type character. Additionally, I know that even though he is unnamed that doesn’t automatically disqualify him from being labeled as a Complete Monster since the unnamed scientist in Fullmetal Alchemist was labeled as such. I also know that characters with small roles in stories can also qualify as a Complete Monster. Anyway, he was the one that made it possible for Flum to be sold into slavery in the first place.
• It is established in the first chapter of the Light Novel that there are laws protecting innocent civilians from being turned into slaves, but this character shows a complete disregard for the said laws when he plays a role in Flum receiving the slave brand all in the name of making a profit.
• Additionally, there are laws regarding the treatment of slaves which the slave merchant violates, so regular civilians, such as Leitch and Welcy, do not look kindly on him, and they certainly do not feel bad for him after he is killed. They show more concern regarding the fates of the illegally traded slaves than what happened to him.
• In a flashback in Volume 03, it is established that this Slave Merchant transitioned newly born babies into the slave market. One of them included Milkit.
• He played a role in mentally torturing/programing slaves, such as Milkit, into believing they were less than human, and they deserved to be sold to make him money.
• Volume 03 revealed he would obtain young slaves and sell them to depraved individuals, such as Satils Francois, who enjoyed torturing them because they would be more responsive than older ones.
• As demonstrated in the second chapter of the Light Novel, he will throw all the slaves he considers to be worthless into a special cell. Afterwards, he unleashes ghouls on the slaves, so they can be ripped apart while he watches on for entertainment.
• The flashback of Volume 03 implies that feeding slaves he considered worthless to ghouls was a regular occurrence for him.
• He has a sword mounted inside the cell has the slaves trapped with the ghouls in. He tells the slaves that if they wish to fight back against the ghouls to save themselves all the need to do is pick it up. However, he doesn’t tell them the weapon is cursed. That particular cursed weapon will melt the body of anyone who touches it, and he gets enjoyment out of seeing one of the desperate slaves melt into a puddle.
• One desperate slave begs him to spare her life, and she promises she will do anything to make herself worthy of being sold. He at first acts like he will spare her life. However, he is pulling a Bait the Dog tactic on her. He stabs her in the throat because he thinks she reeks, and he enjoyed killing the slave himself.
• When Flum begs for mercy because she didn’t do anything wrong, he blames her for costing him a lot of money. He tells her that dying will allow her repent for the sin of being useless. He then goads her into picking up the cursed weapon if she wishes to not die at the hands of his ghouls. Then, he proceeds to laugh at her misery.
• Flum is only spared because her ‘Reversal’ affinity allows her to not only wield the cursed sword, but rather than melting her body, her body is now able to heal like Wolverine.
• After Flum kills the slaver’s ghouls, he begs for his life, and she proceeds to kill him by cutting him to pieces in the Light Novel.
Quotes from the Manga adaptation:
• As he is unleashing the ghouls: “Now then. As I’m sure you already know, you no longer have any value to me as merchandise. So I’ll be disposing of you. However, after how long I’ve let you live, I’ve lost a lot of money feeding you. So I think the least you can do is entertain me with your deaths. A fitting end for a bad investment, wouldn’t you say?”
• After Flum begs for mercy by saying she didn’t do anything wrong: “Yes, you did. You brought this on yourself. They told me you were part of that party of heroes! So I paid a fortune for you! You tricked me! Swindled me! Took away tons of my hard-earned cash! You weren’t even good enough to be a servant, you absolute garbage! You want to atone for your sins?! Then just roll over and die! But if you’re so opposed to dying. Then you could always pick up that sword and fight.” (Laughs while Flum is crying)
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse? There are no Mitigating factors of Freudian Excuse offered. He makes it clear he is motivated by greed and entertainment. If he can’t get a profit out of his slaves, he will be entertained by their deaths. There is no moral justification for the slave merchant nor does the author waste any time in trying to make it seem like we should be sympathetic to him even as he begs for his life. In fact, the series presents it as a good thing that Flum killed him.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
As I mentioned before, the story quickly establishes that there were laws protecting innocent civilians from being turned into slaves, and there are laws regarding the treatment of slaves. The slave merchant doesn’t hold anything back when he has opts to have his ghouls devour the slaves he considers useless. It goes without saying that the actions that the slave merchant along with the people he does business with, such as Satils, commit violate these laws by a large margin.
Regular civilians, such as Leitch and Welcy, as well as other good characters, such as Eterna and Gadhio, are disgusted by the actions of such people. When more people find out about his death in Volume 03, no one expresses any sympathy for what happened to him. Leitch specifically shows more concern regarding what happened to the illegal slaves he traded.
Before he turned Flum into slave, Flum was a relatively innocent teenage girl. The horrors he subjected her to awaken a darkness in her that she didn’t know she had. When she obtains her cursed sword, she doesn’t hesitate to use it on him. The slave merchant is the first person Flum kills. In the Light Novel, she cuts him to pieces, by cutting off his limbs then partially decapitating him. Flum wanted him to suffer for all the evil he put her through and for massacring all the other slaves. She later states she has no regrets killing him even if it could be considered to be in cold blood.
Another character who was a reoccurring villain for the first two volume is a character named Dein who also commits various evil acts. However, his actions are in the Pragmatic Villainy category to maintain his control of the West District. When he first meets Flum, he tricks Flum into accepting a quest that was three times harder than what it was supposed to because he was trying to get Flum killed. Despite what he did, Flum does not attempt to retaliate against him because she wants to focus on building a life for her and Milkit.
Flum come to blows with Dein directly and indirectly multiple times during the first two Volumes. When Flum gets some of Dein's men arrested for stealing, he sends me to sabotage her and assault Milkit. When she kills said men, he takes actions to avenge his men to prove that he is not to be messed with. Eventually when he is backed into a corner, he sells out his loyal men to save his skin. At one point, he actually feels guilty for his actions, but then he shifts the blame of what happened to his men on Flum for putting him in the situation.
When Flum and him come to blows at the end of Volume 02, she does kill him. However, unlike the Slave Merchant or Satils, she kills him out of self defense in a life and death battle. While she hated Dein, the hatred she felt for the Slave Merchant and Satils easily surpassed that.
The Church of Origin also has two rather twisted scientists known as 'Mother' and Echidna they commit projects for the sake of Origin.
'Mother' experimented on the Spiral Children by replacing their hearts with Origin Cores. One of the children was a ten year old girl named Ink. Despite the fact that Ink was considered 'defective' and couldn't control her powers properly, Mother let her live. Ink had this eyeball power that would hunt people who learned too much information on the Church of Origin, so it was a useful tool in getting people to shut up.
When Ink rejected Mother, Mother hit Ink, but Mother still let Ink live. She allowed Flum to do what she wanted with Ink. In fact, Mother seemed to lose all interest in Ink after the rejection. Instead, Mother was working on something else in Volume 03, and Mother also abused one of the Spiral Children who wanted attention. While Mother was not exactly 'merciful', he did allow Ink to live despite being 'defective' and rejecting him which is more than what I can say about the Slave Merchant who feeds 'useless' slaves to monsters.
Echidna is responsible for creating Chimeras that go on rampages and cause a lot of deaths. However, at the same time some of those few of those occasions are not too different from what happens in Jurassic Park where all the safety precautions go wrong and could technically be considered an accident. In Volume 01/Episode 02, the Ogres we see in that laboratory went out of control and killed all those people. An experiment going wrong by itself wouldn't be a factor in a Complete Monster category. For the Slave Merchant, he is willingly causing massacres of innocent people either by feeding them, melting them, or stabbing them himself. Unlike Echidna, he is fine with getting his hands personally dirty.
Final Verdict?
Despite the Unnamed Slave Merchant’s limited screentime, I believe he qualifies as a Complete Monster. In the span of two chapters and a chapter featuring him in a flashback, we learn how he committed so many heinous acts to not just Flum and Milkit, but to other slaves. It is made clear that everything we saw him do was just business as usual for him. Converting innocent free people into slaves along with feeding slaves that can’t make him a profit to ghouls is just another day for him.
While the Slave Trader may not be able to do as much as a member from the Church of Origin, he is an individual who has limited resources. However, with the resources at his disposal, he commits rather vile actions. Based on his personality, if he had access to the Church's resources, his actions would become far worse.
When it comes to Complete Monsters, it’s not always about the amount of screentime or the amount of resources he/she has, but what the character does with it. After reading through the first three Volumes, the actions he did stuck out to me, and he deserves the label.
Edited by Knowledgeseeker on Jun 15th 2021 at 6:41:17 AM