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
Looks like Blight is a cut.
RE: xie323
I'm not saying Azshara a cut, yet, but the current writers have established a trend of whitewashing any skeevy actions from Europe based civilizations, whilst making non europe based civilizations look worse.
I mean why else would they retcon Azshara being an imperialistic jerk whom subjugated the Zandalar people and stole their land, to the Zandalar attacking her for no reason forcing her to fight back? This is the period where the writers literally retconned corrupt human politicans into innocent victims, whilst simultenously retconning it so orcs were always evil with a bunch of new pre-Legion gratuitous evil acts.
- What would you do to save a people? For the great queen Azshara, it is within the deeps that she finds what she needs most: opportunity.
Is what the video says about Queen Azshara, again this is a huge retcon, I don't like it, nor am I saying she's a cut right now, but the current writing does seem to be softening Azshara for some reason.
My one reticence with cutting Blight is that it is from something a decade later. Is it the same writer? Or does it even have any of the same creative team? Not to be difficult, I just want to be sure. I'm only leaning "cut" now because it was a part of an ongoing continuation of the cartoon - It's not like this was a one shot made with nothing in between.
If I had read it myself, I'd probably not be concerned so.
Edited by PolarPhantom on Oct 13th 2021 at 7:00:41 AM
Well damn, Blight sounds like a cut... that really sucks.
Completely random question - I'm reading a gigantic fanfic series at the moment, and one of the main bad guys in one of the fics is our old friend The Batman Who Laughs. He's given some Adaptational Backstory Change, so I'm curious - does the story he gives sound like he has agency - assuming we care at all, since the canon BWL got agency and stayed a monster anyway? This is it, quoted word for word:
What do people think?
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Oct 13th 2021 at 10:02:15 AM
I'm gonna say that the bit about the experimentation... does admittedly make me hesitant. I'd still hear it out but I'm gonna say that's a little too much for me.
Edit: That said if he gets agency at any point in the story, do it— that's more than heinous enough from that monologue alone.
Edited by Riley1sCool on Oct 13th 2021 at 7:06:35 AM
Alright, so I was able to get a hold of Knowledgeseeker, and he told me that he is unable to do the discussion for Lost Judgement. That said, we both decided to let me take over the discussion instead. Might take a while, but I should hopefully have the discussion ready in the next few days, as soon as I figured out for certain if the game has a brand new keeper or not.
Edited by Michealthehero21 on Oct 13th 2021 at 7:19:46 AM
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1634177083076224500&page=1#comment-1
Image pickin thread open for Ben 10
Blight
Edited by Snowy66 on Oct 13th 2021 at 7:26:03 AM
He Who Walks, Rancor, Kurt, Tsin Hark, Wang.
Gimble.
Cut Derek.
I am the one, I am the one, the godlike terror train, superior artificial brain, feel free to call me BlaineGot another for now...
What's the work?
Misty was a British comic from the 70s...a horror/mystery comic narrated by the mysterious "Misty"...each issue would consist of several one-shot little horror stories and serialized tales that would continue into the following issue, usually for a solid 12 or so issues before coming to their natural end.
The first story I'll discuss is "end Of The Line" where a girl's father goes missing from a gang of ruthless thugs, prompting her to look close...whereupon she discovers a plot led by this more: Lord Roland Sefton Vicary
Who is Lord Vicary?
A cruel Victorian noble. Vicary is seen in portrait...looking no different than he had centuries prior, to our young heroine's shock. It turns out Vicary was a criminal and taskmaster who faked his death via an "accident" in the tunnels, killing loads of people with an explosion as he took his household and followers underground with a fungus he discovered. Consuming it grants longevity, and Vicary plans to wait until humankind has wiped itself out with war and conflict to emerge and rule them.
But they need people to mine the fungus to make the elixir...and that means he needs slaves. Vicary, in a word, has countless innocent souls abducted from the world above, to toil on horrific, backbreaking labor, to death as none of those people are immortal. The slaves are tortured, whipped, broken...defiance is met by brutal beatings, starvation or death and Vicary has hi followers kidnap people from the surface above. Laborers...don't last long under Vicary...
And even worse? Some are made immortal, forced to toil forever. When the heroine finds her way there, Vicary plots to starve her and torture/kill her father, but having alerted the authorities, the jig is up...Vicary ends up killed during a cave in as he flees, his kingdom becoming his tomb.
Mitigating issues?
Misty isn't really Tales from the Crypt level of horrid. The stories are more suspense than scary and usually villains aren't too awful....but Vicary? Mass slavery like this, working people to torture and death in huge numbers? The guy is bad. Really, really, really blatantly bad. It's not subtle in its commentary on Victorian labor, with a man like Vicary controlling his victims even unto death and denying many even that release.
Vicary is well over most Misty villains, and we'll have at least four for you. But...here we are.
Conclusion?
And a yes.
to Wang, both versions of Tsin Hark, and Lord Roland Sefton Vicary.
to Stanley Gimble. Cut Derek Powers/Blight.
@STARCRUSHER99: I'm sorry, but I'm still a bit confused on the backstory of the Batman Who Laughs. Did Hugo Strange experiment on normal Batman and Green Arrow to create Laughs or did he experiment on Laughs and Green Arrow?
You know, now that I read it over a second time, I think Joker is meant to be in that experiment mess but I can't quite tell... I think it's meant to be that Batman, Joker, and Oliver were all combined, but the two different uses of "both of us" throw it off. For now I'm gonna assume he doesn't have agency, but I should ask the author just how that was supposed to go down (for my own understanding if nothing else). Thanks for the feedback.
And a yes to Vicary.

Blizzard also noted they want to set her up as a big bad in the future so its' too early to call any redeeming qualities....assuming Blizzard survives this round of controversy of course.
Also per ACW, Kaiserredux's current content, specifically the Roter Morgen stuff, can be discussed early because the mod was last updated in the summer, but the developer gave up and decided to merge the project with Kaiserredux, and it was just folded into KRDX with little changes. The Czech content update that shipped with Rotermorgen will fall under the two week rule but I don't think theres' anyone who qualifies there.
Edited by xie323 on Oct 13th 2021 at 6:06:33 AM