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
Heck, even if we were going to take "Day of the Barney" seriously, doesn't it play him as more of a Cthulhu-esque Eldritch Abomination anyway?
Just watched the latest Kamen Rider Gaim... Micchy definitely counts. There's no doubt anymore. Redyue is now in a red area given she seems to be genuinely loyal to her king.
Attinger claims that wiping out all the transformers (Autobots and Decepticons) is for the good of humanity; however, just like the Decepticons he cares little for the loss of innocent life or the destruction he causes and also uses melted down Autobots and Decepticons to make his own army of remote control attack drones to do his countries bidding. Like I said, he has no Freudian Excuse.
edited 7th Jul '14 3:39:33 AM by VeryMelon
So as a heads up the last chapter of The Wolf Among Us is out this week, but it will be coming out on different platforms at different times of the week, and my one is last one out. So if people could keep spoilers spoiler tagged and wait until next week before discussing Bloody Mary or the Crooked Man.
@ Hodor
Apology accepted.
I can certainly understand your grievances with the types of works you cited, like the recently-discussed, genuinely misogynistic one which had two female CMs but a male rapist who got an idiotic redemption by getting an apology from his female victim. I'm sure the entire thread is disgusted with those ones even if some characters from them might nevertheless qualify.
The difference is that Prison Break is in no way like that, and Christina Scofield is absolutely vile irrespective of whatever gender she has. She doesn't attempt even a Faux Affably Evil front—the scene with her sparing Sarah is not played humorously at all but just serves to show her as an egotistical hypocrite. Since she actually is that evil, the crappy write-up someone did on her, while bad, reads more like a Zero Context Example brought on by Fan Myopia ("Surely everyone must know who this character is and what her crimes are!").
The work also takes the world war plot 100% serious. It's just that the show itself is a bit disjointed. They spend the first season breaking out of prison. Then they spend a season running around the States trying to stop the conspiracy. Then they spend a season breaking out of a Panamanian prison. Then they spend another season running around the States trying to stop the conspiracy. Prison Break is in fact a partial Artifact Title, but the syndicate (sub)plot was there from the start.
@ Lightysnake
I just finished them. I've rewritten all but Ivy League; let them do their own work for once. Doing more research on Jennifer Government, it sounds like a really Anvilicious satire, but John Nike fits.
- Dirty Laundry: The gang leader Gold Tooth is a vicious gangbanger, drug dealer and pimp who crosses as many lines as he can in his limited screentime. When he sees one of his prostitutes who owes him money, he beats her up and rapes her while letting his men rough up her two friends. He then sees a small boy who refused to run drugs for him, and has his men beat and threaten to kill the kid. When a mysterious stranger takes note of this, he threatens to kill him too if he tries to interfere. A wheelchair-bound shopkeeper soon reveals that he was incapacitated when a gang (implied to be led by the same gang leader) did the same thing by killing a young girl for refusing to become a drug runner.
- First: Do No Harm: Violet's husband keeps Violet chained to a wall under guard, naked, beats her almost every day with his bare fists because her Healing Factor keeps her alive and it just annoys him. At one point he briefly considers cutting out her ovaries and womb, just to see if her Healing Factor can handle it. Then he decides not to because he might need her to bear another 'tool'. He also has a daughter whom he considers as nothing more than a disposable tool, sending armed mercenaries after her in an attempt to kill her because he felt she was out of his control.
- Iron Kingdoms: Toruk is the Monster Progenitor of the dragon race, although he considers his progeny the only thing that might pose a threat to him and desires to destroy them all. To accomplish this he becomes an Omnicidal Maniac against every other race. He turns a whole set of island nations into a mix of undead and mutants to serve as his army, all with the intent of slaughtering as many of the inhabitants of the mainland as possible to make a bigger army.
- Jennifer Government: John Nike is a stand-out Corrupt Corporate Executive even by the standards of the corporatist Dystopia in the novel. As the Vice-President of Marketing for Nike, he arranges to increase their latest product's revenue by increasing its notoriety by killing every person who buys it, including children. When agent Jennifer Government catches on to his scheme through the inevitable chain of subcontractors that expose his plot, he orders Jennifer's 8-year old daughter Kate—revealed to be his own child from a previous relation he had with Jennifer—kidnapped and threatens to kill her if Jennifer tries to arrest him. He ultimately tries to hire a paramilitarized NRA to kill the President so he can give his own unscrupulous MegaCorp complete power to control and process humanity as he sees fit. John Nike's greed has no limits and he is willing to see his entire society reduced to an unending nightmare out of selfishness and cruelty.
The Transformers guys both sound like keeps.
edited 8th Jul '14 4:58:06 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
Wow, if he murdered dozens, he may not even fail the heinous standard. Although...Fighteer explains here
.
Really not seeing how Redyue is loyal to Roshuo (that's the king of her civilisation, non-Gaim-watchers). Her objective has always been to obtain the Fruit of Wisdom, his godlike power, from him through fair means or foul - first she endorses an abortive human assassination attempt against him to gauge his defences (stating that either his death or the assassin's would be useful to her), and then she starts harvesting humans en masse to power a device that will resurrect Roshuo's dead wife in return for the Fruit. She states repeatedly that she's only in it for the godhood, and keeping Roshuo sweet is necessary only so that he'll honour their deal and protect her from humanity until she herself is a god.
In addition, Redyue isn't as goal-oriented as the above description might suggest. Her greatest pleasure is in playing sadistic mind-games and social experiments on people, and she wants to be a god because it'll allow her to do that on a much grander scale. While she's waiting for her plan to complete, she spends much of her time dicking around with humanity for laughs, which is one of the biggest reasons why she needs Roshuo's protection in the first place.
What's precedent ever done for us?@27477: Metal Face entry looks good but one sentence needs to be fixed. It says, "...he throws the country of Entia by killing..." I'm assuming throws it into chaos or war, but that needs to be mentioned in the entry. Red Crow sounds like a keeper.
@27479: I'd vote down on Morrison for not being as bad as Red Crow.
@27487: Honestly, I'm not really sure about either Lockdown or Attinger. Lockdown doesn't sound like he's heinous enough and Attinger sounds like he truly buys into his own hype about helping mankind and his country through his actions. He may be a Straw Hypocrite but that doesn't mean he doesn't think he's serving a greater good still. Btw, what is this Seed that's been mentioned? What does it do?
@27498: Entries look good. I'll vote yes on Christina but I need more info on Wyatt. Killing a kid is a big Moral Event Horizon but I'd like to know his full list of crimes before agreeing to his inclusion.
![]()
Well a villain could be delusional and still be a CM. I'm sure both William Stryker and Frollo thought they were doing the right thing by committing genocide, but they were still clearly still monsters. I think Attinger the same way, his beliefs are based on Fantastic Racism, not mention he is clearly planning on making a profit off his plan to create his Transformers, so I don't think he is sympathetic at all.
I will give
to both Transformers villains.
![]()
![]()
For me, it all depends on how much Morrison knew. Hiring the Psycho for Hire while being fully aware of what they did/do/will do is, IMHO, enough to qualify along with the psycho him/herself.
@27508: Oh well, that changes things. If Lockdown knew the bomb would destroy the planet then I'd definitely vote for his inclusion. I'm a little confused with Attinger though, did he know what the bomb would do? Was that how he planned on making man-made Transformers, by unleashing the bomb on the world? If so that would certainly prevent me from thinking of him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
![]()
It usually varies for me since I tend to see enablers as less monstrous than those who commit the actual crimes. However, as I said it varies. Normally I'm more inclined to vote enablers in if they have a lot of their own independent crimes that show they're just as bad as those they employ.
edited 7th Jul '14 11:39:54 AM by OccasionalExister

Whoa, Harold's worse than Dylan Gould.
edited 6th Jul '14 7:47:11 PM by despoa