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. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
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
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Yes to Big Boss Man.
Cut Lavan.
Edited by Bullman on Oct 27th 2021 at 11:06:43 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Professor Gigachad
I guess Lavan can be cut I was always kind of skeptical on him.
CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes
Best Smile
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Yet another Evil Ash, Big Boss, Zaramoth, Overmage.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Chrysalis
Cut Lavan.
I am the one, I am the one, the godlike terror train, superior artificial brain, feel free to call me Blaine
Wild Child
I guess cut Lavan.
Just watched Night Teeth. Has anyone else seen it? Kind of hoping to discuss it with someone.
Why so serious?
Zaramoth and Overmage. Switch to on Chrysalis, cut Lavan.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
So to confirm: Lavan's being cut, but Tirek and Cosmos can stay?
Overlord, don't forget, we have a CM from Rainbow Brite.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
I really don't like the idea of there being precedent for a Sugar Bowl villain because Tirek and the Princess are quite literally the exceptions to the rule. They fully invoke Never Say "Die" in a way that is unusual for the standards of the setting, and their actions are given the levity in something you'd normally see targeted for older audiences. TBH I wouldn't mind extra scrutiny for Tirek too—he has one astoundingly nasty threat toward a child, but it is just a threat, and from what I understand the rest of his rapsheet is generic, vague "cover the world in darkness!" stuff.
When we have a villain from a Sugar Bowl brought up, we scrutinize for damn good reason. It is not now nor ever that we should be allowing villains on the basis that they maybe possibly killed someone or maaaaybe the threat is death is lightly, lightly implied. The Chrysalis posts—both the one for the show and the comic—are infected with those kinds of presumptions, and it's why we don't treat little kids' show villains as seriously as villains with much stronger precedent to keeping for this trope.
Edited by Scraggle on Oct 28th 2021 at 6:38:34 AM
Here are all Tirek scenes, so the users here could judge him with full knowledge of his deeds and personality:
1:44 time mark for the above mentioned threat.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
But Cosmos, at least, is definitely a keeper?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
The Draftsman of Doom
His threats seem vague, other than the decapitation thing. Cut Tirek.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
That's why most of my effortposts come from more "adult" works.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Oct 28th 2021 at 9:26:20 AM
Rawr.
Cosmos is fine. Lemme offer this as a reference photo of her almost burning down an orphanage full of children—and they get three letters into "kill" before they have to censor themselves. There's zero ambiguity.
Tirek...lemme offer...
As much of a Vile Villain, Saccharine Show as he is, my problem is that his rapsheet amounts to this:
- Threatening to kill the kid sidekick of his Dragon (heinous for the medium considering it blatantly breaks the Never Say "Die" convention, but just a threat)
- Transforming some ponies into monsters (generic Baleful Polymorph stuff; they're safely reverted at the end; certainly not as heinous as the "torture" the writeup claims it to be)
- Wants to cause The Night That Never Ends (not heinous—not the way this cartoon is presenting it).
My issue is "The Night That Never Ends" with Tirek has about as much "oompf" as Lavan's "destroy the world" goal—that is to say it doesn't. No hint of death or carnage or even a real apocalypse. "Cover the world in darkness!" has never been a good qualifier for this trope because of how incredibly vague it is. The Rainbow Brite character qualified solely due to the clarification this would kill everyone.
That leaves Tirek with a standout Would Hurt a Child threat, turning a couple of ponies into monsters, and a goal as vague and non-threatening as Lavan's. Tirek is certainly portrayed 100% seriously and his actions—or at least one of them—stand out for the medium, but I wanna ask...is he actually heinous enough? Particularly when I think by far the nastiest thing he does is just a threat? I don't think this would pass muster in a Saturday morning cartoon with even a little less censorship.
I'm not accepting "well, it's a Sugar Bowl/setting for little kids! They're as nasty as they can be!" as an excuse. The picture I just linked up there is of a villain in a comic for 6-year-olds almost burning down an orphanage. A Complete Monster in these types of works should accordingly be just as much of a "what the fuck" rarity.
I'm formally saying chop every single Pony villain except Cosmos.
Edited by Scraggle on Oct 28th 2021 at 7:15:18 AM
Cut Laven and Tirek.
Edited by YobabyColin on Oct 28th 2021 at 9:20:41 AM
The Emperor of Evil!
Chop Tirac
I actually remember watching the video of Tirek's scenes and wondering if he was really bad enough aside from the threat, but I didn't say anything because I though "maybe the full thing gives more gravity". Well, my suspicions were right. Cut Tirek
—signature not found—
The Draftsman of Doom
As we have this MLP discussion, I have been taking a trip down memory lane.
The fact that so many villains have a similar motivation is why I prefer to have personal villainy supplementing global domination/global destruction minded candidates for myself.
In Black & White (Image Comics), Jake Chang supplements his global domination plot with a massacre of a rival corporation, arson, false psychiatric commitment, severely inhumane working conditions, electric torture, and detonating his own warehouse with people still inside.
Otherwise, he'd be a run of the mill dirty businessman with global aspirations.
Rawr.
Chrysalis, G1!Tirek and Lavan. Cosmos can stay.
Going to concur that a villain qualifying in a Sugar Bowl need to be exceptionally bad(which we have with Cosmos and the Dark princess). Childrens media and cartoons like Transformers, GI Joe and Masters Of the Universe are for a more action-oriented genre and audience and there are more real stakes even in earlier Generations/Eras, also these shows have been adapted and rebooted for older audiences many times, whereas MLP, even if it attracts a older audience, can never truly shake off its' Sugar Bowl nature.
Also, Super Robot Wars 30 was out yesterday since I have the EP reserved, going to see if the big bad qualifies or if Fonse Kagatie and/or Alexis Kerib gets some new crimes to warrent a separate entry, especially given that Victory Gundam and Gridman play a important role in the real and super robot story arcs respectively gives an small opportunity for an Lord Embryo style "distinct from series counterpart" thing.
Edited by xie323 on Oct 28th 2021 at 6:59:45 AM
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
I'm fine chopping Tirek and Lavan.
Sky: That's why, to me, some of the best CMs operate at both a grand level AND a personal level. One of the reasons Ego is one of my favorites (helps that Kurt Russell delivers a great performance).
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Frolaytia X Qwenthur of Heavy Object
Tirek.
Cut Tirek.
I think if you are looking for monsters, there are way better choices than MLP.
Compare She-Ra to MLP, She-Ra is a Sugar Bowl world slowly being consumed by a fascist regime, the stakes are way higher than MLP is generally. The Horde will be more ruthless than the average MLP villain. Heck in the recent CGI He-Man show, Skeletor was killing people on screen. MLP doesn't have a villain like Cobra Commander or Skeletor who often get up to some pretty heinous stuff.
The Draftsman of Doom
Overlord: As far as I'm concerned, you're preaching to the choir.
Rawr.
Cut the G1 candidates.
Captain Pinkie Pie! Nah, just Pinkie Pie.
@Overlord, I think you're preaching to the choir now
We say he's "preaching to the choir" but I know the equation as to why this dialogue keeps recurring in the thread. It's a result of us having precedent for these baddies, however miniscule it is, added with the fact little kids' shows seem to have huge Periphery Demographic fandoms—I recall when we were discussing Lavan and a bunch of other MLP baddies the OP was genuinely baffled when we brought up the idea that MLP was, in fact, intended for six-year-old girls.
My response to that: live with it. You can like whatever shows you want, but it doesn't change the intended audience and it doesn't change that a Complete Monster's actual villainy suffers in that environment.
Anyway, I don't want to spend my off day talking entirely about MLP. I got more Marvel on the backburner, and others I'm discussing with other tropers—I'm reading X-Statix to give HamburgerTime a second opinion on Spike Freeman, for instance—but before we get back to Marvel, I've got two orders of business: Evil Dead proposals, and Halloween proposals.
Firstly, Evil Dead! Are we getting sick of Evil Ash posts yet?! Lemme try and spice it up a little bit?
What has ROBOT Evil Ash done?
From the 2014 comic Army of Darkness: Ash in Space, Ash—after the events of Army of Darkness—has somehow found himself on top of a space station. And unluckily for him, so have the Deadites, including Evil Ash, with all his actions from the previous film untouched.
Now an AI who rebuilds himself a robotic body from Ash's cybernetic arm, "Robo-Ash" proceeds to spread the influence of the Deadites throughout the space station, resulting in the possession and death of all but one worker on the station, and the subsequent horrible damnation of their souls.
Robo-Ash is looking for global domination, and he has the exact vantage point to do that from space: Robo-Ash intends to transmit the influence of the Deadites down to Earth through satellite, putting them on every TV and computer screen on Earth. We get a very lovely image of the sort of Hell on Earth Robo-Ash wants to enact; families ripping each other apart in their living rooms, chaos and carnage worldwide, until all of humanity has ripped itself to pieces and Hell on Earth is established. "Soon you'll all be screaming."
Luckily, Ash invokes a spell from the Necronomicon to open a black hole and kicks Robo-Ash into it, presumably killing him (or maybe just transporting him to an alternate future where there's nothing left for him to rule).
Any mitigating factors?
About as many as Evil Ash usually has at this point, honestly. And while the "Hell on Earth" goal for the Deadites might be getting a bit old hat, rest assured this is one of the worst, most wide-scale schemes any iteration of Evil Ash ever pulls in the franchise, and we get a very good look at what it entails via the comic's generous use of Storyboarding the Apocalypse.
Conclusion?
Keeper! One more for me after this, also from the comics.
Edited by Scraggle on Oct 28th 2021 at 8:28:44 AM
Yes to another Evil Ash
Cut King Lavan.