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
That does sound concerning on paper but I am wondering how much of that is left more to implications, I haven't seen the movie so can't be sure and Silver says there isn't much detail on it and if that is true it is much harder for me to personally call it disqaulifying.
Edited by Ordeaux26 on Oct 4th 2021 at 12:13:29 PM
Mmmm...honestly think I'm leaning no Natcha as well, it's small in comparison to her overall character but it sounds like that's an earnest attempt to establish some sort of sympathy and reasoning for her evil, especially with the sadness and anger she displays. With all the pertinent info and viewpoints out, I do find myself feeling negative on her for this trope, personally.
So, with the recent discussions on Marvel symbiotes and what not, here's a Marvel-related proposal of my own, from a series hella dear to my heart...
What's the work?
The Spectacular Spider-Man is a late 2000s animated series about the titular hero, considered by many to be one of the best superhero cartoons of all time. As usual, we follow Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, as he navigates high school life, crushing bills and villains threatening the city. Massive voice cast, cancelled too soon, you know the drill for quality cartoons.
The show already gives us a Keeper in Green Goblin, buuuut I think there may be one more potential amidst the other baddies...
What is the Symbiote? What has it done?
An alien lifeform that hitched a ride on John Jameson's rocket as it landed on Earth, the Symbiote is at first an apparently-lifeless glob of goo, that latches onto Spider-Man and morphs around him as a "black suit", granting him even more power and skills than normal.
All seems well...until the Symbiote begins puppeteering Spidey while he sleeps, talking to him in his head, and corrupting him into a hateful thug willing to discard all his friends and morals, the Symbiote feeding on his negative emotions and spiking them to insanely new heights as it nearly forces his body to kill criminals and ally with mob bosses.
Spidey soon picks up on the way that the Symbiote is twisting him and attempts to remove it, only for the Symbiote to angrily respond by putting Spidey through an entire episode's worth of Mind Rape, forcing him to relive the death of Uncle Ben, his immense guilt and rage as a result of it, all to push Spidey past the Despair Event Horizon and pave the way for the Symbiote to utterly subsume Peter Parker into itself, "mind, body and soul!"
Luckily, though the Symbiote goes so far as to even try to turn Spidey against his memories of Uncle Ben, those memories and the manifestation of Spidey's moral goodness help him fight off the Symbiote and break free of its influence, to which Spidey returns it to its holding cell in a lab and tries to flash freeze it out of existence.
Unfortunately, the Symbiote survives and, calling to the nearby vindictive Eddie Brock, the Symbiote latches onto him and instantly corrupts the lesser-willed man, amping up his hate and rage towards Spidey and Peter Parker before revealing to Eddie that they are one in the same—with this as impetus, the Symbiote bonds with Eddie and together, they become "Venom."
Venom becomes one of Spidey's nastiest foes of the series and his most personal, and while Eddie remains a beacon of tragedy and pity from Spidey, the Symbiote coaxing him, empowering him and poisoning his mind is never neglected as the source of Eddie's villainy and the terror Venom brings upon his archenemy.
As Venom, the duo brutalize Spidey, then attempt to attack his sickly Aunt May in the hospital, driven off by the hero only to then kidnap and hang Spidey's best friend and semi-Love Interest Gwen Stacy from a parade float with quickly-weakening webbing, the girl slowly in danger of falling to her death...and though Spidey tries to save her, Venom fights him off consistently so she will die, but Gwen is saved and Venom sent into a rage.
Spidey then outwits the baddie in a clever way: claiming to want the Symbiote back, the Symbiote quickly tells Eddie to fuck off and betrays him to return to Spidey. When the Symbiote realizes it's been duped, it tries to forcefully assume direct control of Spidey once again, but is rejected by the hero once again, bagged up, and buried alive in concrete, hopefully never to be seen again.
Until Season 2!
In it, Eddie—having become addicted to the Symbiote and both unwilling & unable to fight off its call—tricks Spidey into unknowingly revealing the Symbiote's location, and Eddie digs it up and bonds with it once more, restoring Venom...Venom begins pulling off crimes and assaulting police, framing Spider-Man for it all. When the hero and villain fight, Venom's brutal tactics set an entire apartment building on fire. A horrified Spidey tries to save the tenements, but Venom thwarts him, giddily proclaiming this will be just another act he can pin on Spidey as the occupants nearly burn alive.
An empowered John Jameson shows up and helps save the apartment tenants while Venom flees, only for Venom to later prey on Jameson's deteriorating mental state to attack him as "Spider-Man" and drive him insane, leading Jameson to wreak havoc through New York trying to find and kill Spidey, endangering several innocents in the process.
Venom then makes his nastiest move yet: shouting to the world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, then trying to forcibly unmask him in public and use a gene cleanser serum to remove Spidey's powers...at which point, to Venom's delight?
Venom endangers more innocents as he tries this on Spidey—notably damaging a helicopter full of people and trying to force it to crash into Spidey and blow him up, and later trying to attack Gwen and other high school students and staff just for lulz—but ultimately, Spidey pours the gene cleanser down Venoms throat, and to Eddie's horror, the Symbiote doesn't much like the concoction, and flees Eddie's body to flee into the sewers as the broken, half-mad man rants and raves "Don't leave me! You can't reject me now! I can't stop hating, it only loves me for the hate!"
Freudian Excuse or other mitigating features?
As we all know, normally the black symbiote isn't really personified in Spider-Man lore—it shows up, makes Spidey a dick, then Eddie uses it to be a supervillain—but here? It gets a full-fledged character, being a Yandere Emotion Eater who enjoys the "taste" of negative emotions, spurs them on in its host, and slowly subsumes the host's mind into its own until the host literally considers themselves the Symbiote, constantly using the phrasing of "we". It addicts the host to it, corrupts their mind and uses them how it wishes, doing things like helping Spidey beat the Sinister Six while he sleeps simply to eliminate enemies and get Spidey cash.
And when Spidey fights it off? It reacts by putting him through Mind Rape and trying to turn him into a broken shell, then forcefully tries to take control, then uses Eddie as its new host to ruin Spidey's life for "rejecting us!", bragging to Eddie "We sense your fury, your hatred, and its taste is sweet!"
I definitely understand some hesitations about listing "Venom", but here's the thing: The Symbiote are Eddie are well-established as being two minds, working together while the Symbiote corrupts and subsumes Eddie. Both the story itself and show creator Greg Weisman outright say that the Symbiote is solely responsible for Eddie becoming flat-out evil, and the Symbiote's influence is always there—even though, upon its return in Season 2, it doesn't have the "personal" dialogue it was given in Season 1, it's still treated as the evil force it is, corrupting Eddie and becoming Venom with him to fuck with Spidey while they both have words with the hero. Eddie is treated with sympathy by Spidey and regarded as a victim...the Symbiote isn't, being an evil stain that twists Eddie's already-present insecurities and emotional issues into outright homicidal rage.
Agency isn't an issue, either, unlike for many symbiotes. The Symbiote here is given zero backstory or origins beyond "it came from outer space", and while it feeds on negative emotions... there's nothing anywhere in the text saying it's Made of Evil, and it's telling that when the thing is buried in concrete for months, it's perfectly alive and well when dug up, showcasing well enough that it does not need to "feed" to be kept alive.
Heinousness?
This one's easy: the Symbiote may lack Goblin's greater scope, but it is the most personal villain Spidey faces, and the levels of fuckery it pulls with him are nasty. It puts him through an episode of Mind Rape, corrupts Eddie into becoming Venom, tries to kill Aunt May and Gwen to hurt Spidey, then goes on to frame the hero, drive Jameson off the brink into madness, start a building fire then actively prevent Spidey from saving the screaming occupants, ultimately intending to render Spidey powerless then watch as all his enemies use the knowledge Venom provides them to target the hero and his loved ones...the Symbiote's plenty bad.
Final Verdict?
Weird as it is, I do think the Symbiote counts. The show well establishes it as an independent entity that corrupts and twists its host to its whims and will, and while—once it becomes Venom with Eddie—Eddie is the one doing the bulk of the talking, the Symbiote is still there, empowering, corrupting and guiding him on ways to hurt Spidey, and shows itself willing to ditch him for either a better host, or just to leave him high and dry to save its own ass when they're forcibly separated by the cleanser.
Edited by Ravok on Oct 4th 2021 at 1:45:30 AM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!
to the venom symbiote
Edited by G-Editor on Oct 4th 2021 at 9:24:55 AM
My sandbox of EPs and other stuffThis is an odd one but bare with me
What is the Work?
I am Innocent, an iPhone game that serves as a sort of mystery/thriller. Basically you (the player) are someone who lost their kid sister long ago, which has cast a shadow over your life and damaged your relationship with both your father and ex girlfriend. Suddenly you get contacted by a kidnapped man named Erwin Finch, as well as the guy who kidnapped him. The kidnapper claims that Finch is a serial killer who's victims include your kid sister. You're than challenged to investigate the case and prove whether or not Finch is innocent within a set period of time. This leads to a long and tangled investigation which ultimately leads to our candidate.
Who is the Candidate? What have they done?
Surprise, it turns out Erwin is NOT the candidate. Rather it's his PSYCHIATRIST, Dr Alexander Harlowe. Harlowe seems to be a respected pillar of the community but is in fact a brutal serial killer. Harlowe's first victim was your kid sister Cecile, who was being forced to let a dog that she wanted to take home back outside. Harlowe encountered Cecile and murdered her, realizing that he RELISHED the pure terror in her eyes. A few years later he murdered his stepdaughter Mary (who he had also been sexually abusing). As all of this was going on he discovered that one of his patients (Erwin) had a daughter who went to the same school as Cecile and Mary AND that Erwin had Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Realizing that Erwin would be a perfect scapegoat he played the part of the kindly psychiatrist, giving him medication for his illness. However, whenever he wanted to commit a murder he always made sure Erwin was given placebo's instead (apparently Doctors are supposed to sometimes do that in order to test if the medicine is working), so that Erwin wouldn't have an alibi. Harlowe eventually racked up a bodycount of 12 victims and then turned Erwin into the police, even testifying at his trial with the intention of getting Erwin convicted for his crimes. However because Erwin seemed to have an alibi the case ultimately fell apart and Erwin was released.
Harlowe goes on with his life until the main character contacts him as part of the investigation (when Finch was taken into custody the actual medicine was on his person and put in lockup; his daughter describes the pills as being white, which naturally arouses your curiosity). Harlowe of course puts on a friendly facade while still trying to imply that Erwin is guilty. However you the main character get your friend Carl to break into Finch's house (yeah you do a LOT of dodgy stuff in the game) and recovers the white pills.....which turn out to be the placebos mentioned earlier. At this point you confront Harlowe again, and he becomes noticebly more blunt and asks you not to contact him again.
This leads to the climax where you ask your other ally (a hacker named Ghost) to break into Harlowe's computer. Ghost agrees after some reluctance.....and uncovers airtight proof of Harlowe's guilt (we hear mention of torture videos which are supposedly to gory to actually see) and a diary in which Harlowe demonstrates just HOW sick he is.
At this point we learn that our father is the kidnapper, and by showing Harlowe's diary we can prove that Finch is innocent. The Father lets Finch go, but than goes after Harlowe, holding him at gunpoint. You're given the choice to either let your father kill him or spare him so the authorities can take him into custody.
Mitigating Factors? Freudian Excuse? Yeah....no. We see Harlowe's manifesto and the guy is an absolute monster. He openly sees emotions outside of fear as worthless, and if anything he finds terror beautiful. He puts on a show of caring for his family....and yet he was also raping his daughter for years before killing her.
The only issue is that due to the format of the game (it's largely told over text messages and puzzles) we don't get a lot of explicit detail of the crimes themselves, just the impact of them. We see a single photograph of one of his victims (not an overly brutal one thankfully), and the manifesto in which he reveals his worldview. But the torture videos aren't shown; just stated to be REALLY REALLY awful. If they were shown it would absolutely be a slam dunk though.
Heinousness Standard
The only other villains are your father the kidnapper and a pervert who's computer you break into as a favor for a policeman and they both fall far short. Your father is motivated by guilt over the circumstances surrounding Cecile's death and when given proof that Finch is innocent he lets him go. Everything he does is ultimately thanks to what Harlowe did. The other guy doesn't show up or even get spoken too.
So yeah, heinousness wise Harlowe is the worst in story.
Does He Qualify?
Personally I think he does.
Edited by LordYAM on Oct 4th 2021 at 12:48:48 PM
Yes to... another Symbiote, Dr. Harlowe
No to Natacha, from the context of the dialogue (never seen the movie myself) the "Who care about them?" sounds like somewhere between Despair Event Horizon and Broken Bird.
If it means anything though; yesterday night I re-watched an old movie I've seen back in 2012, remembering the villainess to be a really, really awful character and thinking she's a keep, and... nyet, as it turns out the ending reveals she does care about the Big Bad, which she had an affair with, that she does genuinely care for him and it's not about power and money and whatnot.
...Stuff like this happens, man
A few more late writeups:
- Shen vs. Kai: Hei Yinying is a demon who, for thousands of years, has been approaching mortals and offering a Deal with the Devil which allows him to claim their chi and souls, turning the latter into his perpetually-tormented slaves; he prefers to target altruistic and desperate souls due to them being more powerful. Hei Yinying created the divergent universe by making a deal with Shen after the latter's original death, offering him a second chance, then making another deal with Kai which sets Kai loose on the Mortal Realm; he indifferently admits he was expecting Kai to raze Gongmen City to the ground. Both deals are part of Hei Yinying's plan to claim all the souls of Kai's Jombified victims, including the noble kung fu masters, so that he can forcibly usurp his superiors in the Underworld. When Hei Yinying's original plan fails and he has to fight Shen and Kai himself, he sets his past victims' souls on the duo with the agreement that only the first one to kill them will get resurrected.
- Shadow Ops: Red Mercury: Kate Daniels is a CIA agent and the true mastermind behind the events of the game. Allying with Russian Foreign Intelligence Service agent Yuri Entropov, Kate hired Vladimir Styanovich, aka "Vlady the Vicious", to steal two "Red Mercury" nuclear bombs from Russia. When Vlady failed to deliver the nuke to her and tried to deactivate it, Kate remotely detonated it, killing countless soldiers and Vlady himself. Escaping and killing Yuri after he stopped being useful, Kate revealed that she intended to "shake things up" by using the remaining nuke to kill world leaders, before she rigged the train she was on full of explosives and sent it to crash into the station filled with innocent people. Arriving in Paris and reaching the top of the Eiffel Tower, Kate hoped to detonate the nuke there to maximize its blast radius and destroy the entire city.
Deranged Park Ranger has been launched by the way. It can be used for applicable entries.

Ehhh, that does sound concerning when Lighty puts it that way, I'm abstaining for now but leaning on a cut.