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 Mack, Xxggs and Terry.
Alright then, let's just get this all done:
- Hex (1985-1987):
- Reinhold Borsten is a power-hungry man who let the world be destroyed for the sake of his own self-advancement. After learning of a future nuclear holocaust from a dying time traveller, Borsten covered up his death and went to the future to take power, leaving behind his wife and daughter to die in the process and ensuring over 150 million deaths. To secure his position, Borsten then makes friends with the Conglomerate by capturing warriors from various time periods, putting them in stasis to manipulate them into thinking nothing is wrong, and then tricking them into fighting to the death for their own entertainment, also allying with S'ven Tarah to receive superpowered soldiers and Take Over the World. When Jonah destroys his operation and he's saved by his doctor, Borsten murders him to ensure his own survival, blaming Jonah for everything that went wrong and intending to hunt him down further.
- Mack Austin and Terry Ingalls are members of the Combine, a criminal syndicate seeking to gain control of Gotham City. To do so, they manipulate Jonah into thinking that Batman killed Stiletta, when in reality they've kidnapped her, placed her under mind control, and forced her into a fighting ring for their own entertainment. When the heroes ally against them, Mack and Terry first sell off Stiletta to someone who then experiments on her, then help their boss mass-produce their robotic soldiers to massacre thousands of innocent people, intending to force the police to bend to their will.
- Issue #16 ("The Slayer and the Slave"): The Xxggs lord and commander are two members of the hostile Xxggs race, the aliens who will take over the Earth in the future. After making their way to Earth, the Xxggs killed all who resisted and enslaved the remainder, reducing the human race significantly and turning them into cattle. When the commander then learns of S'ven's time traveling attempts to subvert their race, he orders his forces to follow him and sabotage him, seeking to ensure their subjugation of Earth can continue without consequence.
I suggested Lighty revamp Luciano a bit so we're emphasizing the scope of what he wants to do and just how awful the way he kills Knightmare pilots is. If he doesn't want to I can rework my old entry though.
Good job posting on him and explaining how he stands out in the now clearly insane Geass heinous standard. Hearty yes to keeping him!
Also yes to Star's guys as well! Great job with these!
Edited by 43110 on Oct 6th 2021 at 5:12:03 AM
I'll tweak the Hex entries next Monday (holiday here in the US) and request locking the following week.
BTW, according to the DC wiki, Hex follows events of this comic
, which is Pre-Crisis, so...shrug. Have I mentioned I hate DC continuity?
DC has 9 different groups for the CM page, while Marvel only has 4 (616, Ultimate, What If, and everything else).
Any quotes/images for the Wonder Woman page?
Edited by ACW on Oct 6th 2021 at 5:17:00 AM
Alright, my next one!
What's the work?
Squid Game was like the big hit of the year and is now the biggest show in the world...so, welcome to the Squid Game. Mysterious wealthy benefactors offer people a chance for wealth...Gi-hun is a man down on his luck with someone to look after: his mother. Estranged from his family, he and over 450 others arrive and they're told it's a competition full of children's games....with very deadly twists. Red Light, Green Light? Moving gets you shot. All of this for the amusement of wealthy VIP's.
And one of the contestants? Jang Deok-su
Who is Jang Deok-su?
A hulking, brutal mobster on the run from the broader mob, who wants the money from the Squid Game...Deok-su is a vicious collector who relishes hurting others, who frequently beat another contestant Sa-Byeok for her debts, with her dialogue strongly implying he raped and/or prostituted her for money. After the first game, Deok-su passes and allies with a woman named Han Mi-nyeo, a con artist who he sleeps with but discards when she's of no further use after she saves him in the second game: carving a shape out of a honeycomb...
Then when the time comes for food, Deok-su and his cronies jump the line and he takes someone else's share. When the man protests, Deok-su beats him to death...to maximize his chance of survival and eliminate more contestants, he kicks off a riot to kill as many as possible (about 80 die).
The next game? Tug of War...on a giant two part bridge, the rope through a guillotine...the losing team is tugged off the bridge and the rope severed by a guillotine blade, sending the losers plummeting. Deok-su's team easily wins and he sadistically gloats about it, telling the heroes he's sorry he didn't kill them instead...the next game?
Marbles. He wins against his own right hand and laughs hysterically as the man is shot. The final game is by far the most brutal: a bridge consisting of two glass pannels on either side, with many of them...one will hold a human body. One will shatter on impact. There are no hints. Deok-Su tells the people in front of him to go or be pushed...
At his turn? He refuses to go, screaming the others have to go ahead of him or they'll all die when time runs out. Mi-nyeo offers to go ahead, disgusted at him...but then, knowing she'll die if she does, she locks her arms around him and reminds him she said she'll kill him if he betrayed her...
As he frantically pleads, Mi-nyeo tosses them both back, shattering the next panel to reveal the unsafe one while sending herself and Deok-su plummeting to their deaths.
Mitigating issues?
Heinousness is HIGH in this series. The other contenders are the Front Man, who's in charge of the games and presents them, but he seems to care for his brother and regrets shooting him. The VIP's are rich pigs, but a group and can't keep. The founder of the games is...really awful, but his affability is genuine and he truly seems to care for Gi-hun and thanks him for such fun games together.
Deok-Su takes a lot of chances to be a dick but frankly? The riot is what gets him here for me. He gets 80 people killed just to maximize his own chances, beats a man to death and is fine taking everyone with him, in addition to just being an asshole all the time.
He's wholly devoid of good qualities, being an openly cruel bastard every opportunity.
Conclusion?
A keeper.
Yes to Deok-su. Let me close the recent Code Geass sweep with one more guy from the Renya of the Darkness prequel manga: Lord Aaron, from chapters 15—22.
What has Lord Aaron done?
Part of the Nova Hispania, Lord Aaron is a conquistador who subjugated an island in the Phillipine Archipelago. He won the favor of the locals with promises of peace and loyalty, then promptly went back on his word and crushed the entire island under his boot. The population was enslaved and forced into soul-crushing labor for Aaron's convenience. Those who rebel—and there's a lot of rebels—are killed without mercy. Entire villages have been enslaved and destroyed under Aaron's rule.
We follow, though much of his arc, Esteban, whose fiancé Talia was taken by Lord Aaron. Lord Aaron transformed Talia into a Knightmare, wiping her mind utterly and reducing her to a mute, Blank Slate killer. Esteban cheerfully makes Talia watch as he tortures a random prisoner with a cat-o'-nine-tails, speculating about what pose he'll put Esteban and his friends in after he kills them. Aaron takes sadistic delight in unveiling Talia to the horrified Esteban, and orders her to kill her own fiancé and all of his friends.
Thankfully, when he's trying to publicly execute one of Esteban's allies, Talia finds it in herself to rebel and stab the asshat, and he's not soon after flung off a cliff to his death.
Any mitigating factors?
Yeah, even in a setting where millions aren't getting slaughtered by mecha, Aaron's not necessarily the only one to have enslaved or even destroyed villages, but he is the only one among them with this many sadistic flourishes. He's a totally remorseless Smug Snake and I think he's got well enough of a body count for his tier to count compared to other, more rounded minor villains in the manga.
Conclusion?
Keep.
Edited by Scraggle on Oct 6th 2021 at 3:46:30 AM
Here's the Marvel guys I owe for now. More incoming.
- Morbius: Stoker Collins is a jumped-up cult leader who torched a nightclub full of vampire wannabes because they weren't hardcore enough for his taste. Collins begins brutally killing homeless vagrants and exsanguinates them in a way in a way that implicates Morbius; when the two inevitably butt heads, Collins gloats that his soul is "blacker than Mephisto's earwax" and that he murdered all the vagrants purely for the kicks.
- Captain Marvel: Karl Coven is a sick, sadistic serial killer who tortured seventeen people to death—men, women and children, entire families at a time—for the purpose of Satanic rituals. Coven gloats to Rick Jones, who witnessed Coven skin an entire family alive, that he knew Rick was watching and that he enjoyed displaying every second of the carnage. When Coven ends up supernaturally revived at his trial and he's let go on a technicality, he begins trying to kill people again, including a random alien whose neck he snaps and the wife of a cop whom he'd killed years ago.
- Nightstalkers: The serial killer who would become known as "Short Circuit" murdered fourteen children in tribute to his demonic mother, Lilith, before his trial and execution. When the switch was pulled on the electric chair, Short Circuit tapped into his demonic power and proceeded to turn the entire prison into a charnel house. All for the sake of a power trip, Short Circuit dunked his victims in and out of interdimensional portals to let them endure the horrors on the other side; by the time the Nightstalkers arrive, the prison is swamped with an ocean of corpses and those left are so mad they've raked out their own eyes.
Edited by Scraggle on Oct 6th 2021 at 4:08:25 AM
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Aaron and Jang. How is the show? I’d watch it myself, but the sheer amount of hype, praise, and memery has ironically made me suffer Hype Aversion and avoid the show. It’s why I’m really glad I played Undertale before it blew up.
Edited by MasterN on Oct 6th 2021 at 3:17:46 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
to Xxggs lordship and commander, Mack and Terry, Bradley, and Aaron
Just started watching Squid Game so I’m comfortable giving Deok-Su a
I'm back with a new proposal.
What is the work?
Inazuman, a Toku superhero series produced by Toei.
It follows Goro Watari, a man who stumbles upon a secret underground war going on in human society between two factions of mutants - the Youth League who seek to coexist with humanity, and the Neo-Human Empire, who believe the world is on the brink of famine and seek to exterminate humans so they can claim all the resources for themselves. After helping a group of Youth League children being chased by the Neo-Human Empire's soldiers, Goro discovers that he happens to be a powerful mutant. To fight against the Neo-Human Empire, Goro has his powers awakened by the Youth League, granting him the power to assume a fighting form called Sanagiman that can further mature into the moth-themed Inazuman. In the form, Goro fights against the Neo-Human Empire's Mutant Robots.
Who is the villain?
The Big Bad Goro initially fights is Emperor Banba, the ruler of the Neo-Human Empire, but he's eventually upstaged by our candidate - Führer Geisel.
To give some context though, because it gets confusing and isn't really explained in the show, it turns later on that there's two different kinds of mutants in the show, the regular mutants that Goro, the Youth League, and the Mutant Robots are, and the Neo-Humans, which is what Banba and Geisel are. Banba wants to incorporate the regular mutants into his empire and sees them as his allies against humanity, while Geisel views mutants as a threat and wants to exterminate them while keeping humans as slaves for the Neo-Human race.
This difference in ideology, eventually leads Geisel to form his own faction, the Despar Army, and to mount a coup against Banba. By the end of the original series Geisel has overthrown Banba and become the new ruler of the Neo-Human Empire, setting him up as the Big Bad of the sequel series Inazuman Flash.
What does he do?
We get our first glimpse of the Führer at the end of the original series, after he's overthrown Emperor Banba. So our intro to Geisel is him upstaging another villain, who was already pretty bad.
By the second episode Geisel has already crossed a lot of lines. He gives a speech about how humans need to be enslaved and mutants should be exterminated, and has his men kidnap athletes from all across Japan. The reason? So he can set them loose in a field and hunt them with a bow and arrow in what he calls a "safari".
In episode 6, Geisel sends a group of soldiers led by his right-hand robot Udespar to level an entire city and kill all of the civilians fleeing it en masse.
After Udespar is destroyed in a duel with Inazuman, Geisel has him rebuilt into the "Udespar Brothers" Alpha and Beta, In episode 9, Geisel sends his henchman Scissors Despar to steal a device to amplify the Udespar Brothers' special move, Udespar Hurricane. He then Udespar Brothers use the device to perform a strengthened Udespar Hurricane to raze a city, watching from his HQ in glee as hundreds of civilians are massacred and displaced. In the same episode, he sends Scissors Despar to kill a boy Goro befriended who has psionic mutant powers.
In episode 12, we're introduced to the capital of the Despar Army, an underground city called Despar City. The city is populated by humans whom Geisel kidnapped and forced to serve as workers in his mini-society. Geisel controls his civilians through a set of rigid and authoritarian laws, including a strict curfew and a ban on reading books, and has anyone who breaks these laws punished by Mind Control or execution.
In the final episode, Geisel enacts a plan to overcharge the artificial sun providing light to Despar City so it explodes and sinks Japan's archipelago. His daughter Karen overhears the plan and shuts down the sun before it can explode, leading Geisel to kill his daughter for defying him.
Heinous Standard
Geisel pretty much sets it. His only competitor is the previous Big Bad, Emperor Banba. Now, Banba is a pretty bad villain, who brainwashed mutants to be soldiers for him and had his forces kill humans en masse. Geisel however is much worse and frequently has his soldiers mass murder both humans and any mutants they find, and is shown actively enjoying killing people and watching his forces maim civilians. For the villain of a 70s Toku show he's quite dark and responsible for some of the bloodiest scenes in the show.
Mitigating Factors
Geisel professes in the beginning that he wants to protect the Neo-Human race from harm, but it's pretty obvious from his policies and actions that he just wants to be in control of everything, no matter if it's humans or neo-humans.
He is given one redeeming quality in the final episode in the form of his only daughter, Karen, who he's protective of. But, considering Geisel slaps her in the episode for talking back to him and later kills her without remorse, it's safe to say that that mitigating factor is subverted.
Final Verdict
I would say a hard
. He's A Nazi by Any Other Name and a very vile character especially in comparison other villains of Toku shows of the time.
Führer Geisel.
Like. Woah, he literally does stage death with captured humans. A lot of both personal AND grand scale villainy
Watch me destroying my country
Führer Geisel
Another for Mitsuo Ando who played who was Professor Monster
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
