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
My impression was that it was just rhetoric, the same as using "my people" or "my culture" or "my planet" while only really talking about his own specific worldview. His father and grandfather probably were soldiers who died in the Kree-Xandari conflict, yes, but in my opinion the movie didn't indicate he actually cared about them, just that he used them as propaganda in an attempt to justify his actions to the rest of the galaxy. Though I acknowledge that there are many ways to interpret it.
edited 9th Aug '14 11:47:12 AM by LordXavius
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BTW, I HOPE to finish Anime And Manga Subpages tomorrow.
Also, I'll submit these
Monday.
I don't think so. Ronan had an entire movie to get any sympathetic motivations or root causes out, and unlike Malekith we have no indication those weren't cut. Ronan's main motivation is 'the old ways' and hatred. But he never mentions his forebears' death as a root cause, or a sympathetic one. It comes across as more an insult to his belief system. Furthermore, he seems to enjoy inflicting the same supposed pain on others.
Changing the subject, though, anyone mind if I submit the cuts for My Little Pony's subpage? I can go through the main fanfic and Pokemon pages, too.
edited 9th Aug '14 11:51:01 AM by Lightysnake
The thing that would prove, though, is that he'd have to have been a severely morally messed up person from the start to think that the genocide of billions (many of them complete innocents) is justified due to the death of two people that were closely connected to him.
It's been covered that a Complete Monster can be a Knight Templar, or have reasons for being who they are and doing what they do, or even have something tragic about their character. But if none of it is adequate in offsetting how absolutely atrocious and heinous they are, and in fact adds to it, then they still belong in the trope. If we're not certain that Ronan loved his grandfather and father beyond Wild Mass Guessing and Alternative Character Interpretation but we do know for sure that he's so amoral and petty that he would use two deaths as justification for his fanaticism and genocide, than I'd say the evidence that he is a Complete Monster outweighs any evidence that he isn't.
I think it 'mattered' to him, but not in a good way. It's a part of his psycho code of honor, not about them as people.
However, I do take issue with the idea we're not expected to take Ronan seriously. Quill dancing at him is one thing. If Ronan began to dance back at him, then that'd be a fair point. "Terran! Your dancing stands accused! They call me fanatic, Accuser...they also call me totally down with it!
Yeah, that'd disqualify him. As is, he reacts with flat out befuddlement.
You know, that just makes me think Zander Rice doesn't count. I mean the entry itself says he's getting revenge on Wolverine's genetic double, X-23, because Wolverine killed his father. Why does he count as a Complete Monster if vengeance for his father is his motive?
edited 9th Aug '14 12:18:05 PM by OccasionalExister
Because he shows consistently he's acting out of nothing more than disgust and hatred. He doesn't show any love for his father, he's operating on ego and contempt. The kid he was is long gone by the time of the present.
Him sending X-23 to murder his own son is proof how little family means to him. His number one issue is irrational hatred of X-23 because he sees her as an 'animal.'
A better example of a CM still angry about their father's death might be Darken Rahl
edited 9th Aug '14 12:26:43 PM by Lightysnake
Here is a character I am unsure of: Malcomb from Blackenstein. Like Blacula, Blackinstein is a Blakxploitation film that parodies a famous monster, and just like Blacula's version of Dracula, Malcomb is a character responsible for the Tragic Monster's Start of Darkness, that is actually worse than the monster itself. Malcomb is a lab assistant who sabatoges an operation for a man who needs new limbs, the reason? he had a crush on the man's fiancée and wanted him out of the way. The experiment goes wrong and he turns into a monster. Near the end, Malcomb tries to rape the man's fiancée, and gets killed by the monster.
What do you think? does one rape and one count of trying to ruin someones life cut it?
jjjWith Malcomb, he really sounds like a dickhole to me, but I'm not sure if he's enough to qualify -did the monster kill other people, and if he did, did Malcomb intend it, and if not, does he care ? Anyways, I'm giving him a
for now.
I have thought of a qualifier though. V Incent Price's Prince Prospero in the Roger Corman film Masque Of The Red Death
Some serious Adaptational Villainy as in the film, Prospero is a monstrous satanist who abandons his people to the plague and Red Death. The film opens with Prospero visiting an infected village when two starving villagers confront him. Prospero sentences them to death and kidnaps a woman close to both of them when she tries to intervene (she's the elder's daughter, and the younger man's fiancee). Prospero invites the nobility to his castle after having the village burned down. Prospero tries to seduce the woman, Francesca, and eventually has her lover Gino and father Ludovico brought to him where he orders them to fight to the death for his amusement. When they refuse, he has a series of daggers brought to them, with one being poisoned and forces them to take turns cutting their own arms. Ludovico has the final dagger, which is the poisoned one, and Prospero tires of the game and stabs him.
Another nobleman tries to gain entry to the castle with Prospero refusing despite them being 'friends.' Prospero happily shoots him through the neck with a crossbow bolt with amusement, and gives the man's wife a dagger to 'spare herself' the Red Death. When the villagers later try to gain access to the palace to save themselves, Prospero has them shot dead with arrows with only a little girl as a survivor.
As Prospero's ball, the Red Death himself finally arrives and Prospero is the last to die. As he does, the Red Death asks "why are you afraid to die, Prince Prospero? Your soul has been dead a long time."
I am going to have to vote no on Ronan. We are not given any indication that he doesn't care about his father and grandfather. He continually uses their deaths as an explanation of his motivation. We need to be given concrete evidence that a character doesn't care about people they claim to care about for them to be able to count for Complete Monster. I saw no evidence in the Guardians of the Galaxy that Ronan's rage about the deaths of his family members is any thing other than caring about people who had been close to him. He doesn't think that signing a peace treaty is a resolution that he can be happy about because it doesn't make up for the lives that have already been lost and doesn't prevent it from happening again.
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Prospero deliberately orders her spared. However, given he's leaving her to the cold and Red Death, it's hard to see it as anything resembling altruism.
He does show a fascination for Francesca, but because he's never met someone whose pure faith rivals his own for Satan and he wants to corrupt her.
ACW, can we please stop retreading old ground constantly? It goes up to the poster, as you should know. If it's a huge part of the character, then we tend to lean to cut. Personally, if it's a small, incidental thing, I don't give the benefit of a doubt with a giant laundry list of crimes.
With Ronan, though, it is a very small thing in the film. It's two minor lines, and I would challenge anyone to find me a single time Ronan speaks of his forebears with fondness. Instead, he talks about how he follows the old ways.
People trying to give him redeeming qualities or people he loves, or make him out to be a victim are constructing an entirely new character from the violent, fanatic engine of hate the movie gave us and voting against that as opposed to what's onscreen. He does not talk about how much he misses his forebears. He doesn't talk how honored he is by them. He talks about his loathing for Xandar, about his hatred of peace, and he openly gloats about inflicting this supposed pain on others. He is a terrorist and a murderer with plans for genocide, and all he seems affected by is that his code and the 'old ways' are offended and he wants to answer for it with Xandar.
Not to mention, even with Xandar gone, he has no intention of stopping. Why does he want to kill Thanos? His offended pride. Xandar is no different.
edited 9th Aug '14 2:17:11 PM by Lightysnake

This ambiguity is exactly the problem because Ronan doesn't get much character focus. There's no concrete evidence either way that Ronan only views their deaths as a personal insult or if he really did care about them. In fact, I'd say it's an entirely valid interpretation that their deaths could be the cause for his fanaticism, given how he brings them up when talking about not forgiving Xandar for their deaths, and when he's about to destroy Xandar as "revenge" for them.
edited 9th Aug '14 11:36:25 AM by OccasionalExister