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
What’s the Work?
Clear and Present Danger is the third and final film in the Jack Ryan trilogy (the other two are The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games) adapted from the Tom Clancy book of the same name. In it, a close friend of the President is killed, along with his family, and CIA analyst Dr. Jack Ryan discovers that the man was laundering money for Colombian drug cartels, and one of them, Ernesto Escobedo, killed him. The President, enraged by this, orders his National Security Advisor Admiral James Cutter to initiate covert operations against the cartels, and the guy Cutter works with is my candidate.
Who is Robert Ritter and what does he do?
Robert “Bob” Ritter is the CIA Deputy Director of Operations and Cutter’s right hand man. When the President orders Cutter to strike back at the Cartels, he creates Operation RECIPROCITY which involves Ritter getting CIA operative John Clark to organize a bunch of soldiers to sabotage the cartels’ operations. In order to do this Ritter has Ryan (who is acting CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence) request more funding from Congress, meaning that if the operation is exposed, Ryan will get all of the legal blame while Cutter and Ritter get off scot-free since the President gave them “get out of jail free cards.”
The operation goes pretty smoothly, with Clark’s men blowing up several planes belonging to Escobedo and also blowing up a manufacturing facility filled with Escobedo’s men. However when Ryan and an FBI agent are sent to Colombia to recover the laundered money, a bunch of cartel members, secretly organized by Escobedo’s intelligence officer Felix Cortez, ambush and kill most of the people present, causing the President to declare that “The gloves come off” and when Escobedo gets all of the cartel members to meet in one place Clark has the building blown up. When it’s discovered that several civilians were present, including children, Cutter is mortified while Ritter simply says that this is what it means for the gloves to come off.
After this, Felix contacts Cutter and Ritter, who agree to cut off Clark's communication with his men in exchange for Felix giving them Escobedo (who got wasn't caught in the explosion by pure luck) so Felix can take over the drug trade and regulate it in a way that makes America look good. This results in all but 3 of Clark’s men being killed and 2 of them being captured.
When an angry Clark calls Cutter and Ritter, Cutter lies and tells him that Ryan threatened to expose the operation if they didn't cut off Clark’s communications, causing Clark to say that he's going to murder Ryan. A few days later, Clark calls Ritter and says that he's killed Ryan, and Ritter just hangs up instead of turning the coms back on. As it turns out, Clark was lying and had kidnapped Ryan and realizes that Ritter and Cutter sold him out. In the end, Clark and Ryan rescue the surviving soldiers, kill Felix, and Ryan exposes Operation RECIPROCITY to the public, screwing over the President, Cutter, and Ritter.
Mitigating Factors?
Ritter is more than bad enough, being responsible for a bunch of deaths, including children and trying to first set up Ryan as a fall guy, and later being complicit in Cutter’s attempt to get him killed. The next worst person is Felix who organizes the ambush that kills 10 people, murders an FBI secratary, and is the one that kills Clark’s men. The other two films don’t do much to the HS, with the 2nd film’s villains being IRA agents that try to kill a member of the Royal Family and later try to kill Ryan’s wife and daughter (they only end up killing about 6 people in the film). The 1st film has a submarine commander murder one of his officers and later destroys an enemy sub in a fight. I think Ritter is fine in this regard
While Cutter is nominally the one in charge, the film frames them as a Big Bad Duumvirate with the President as a hands off Man Behind the Man, and Ryan being the fall guy for the whole thing seems to be Ritter’s idea and not Cutter’s. Ritter is uncaring about the deaths of civilians and children and seems only interested in making himself look good. He seems a bit uncomfortable with Clark promising to kill Ryan, he still goes along with it and seems more worried about Clark finding him out than he is about Ryan’s death (especially since he tries to make Ryan the fall guy for RECIPROCITY). He is seen in bed with his wife at one point but it’s for one scene and he never mentions her in the movie.
Conclusion?
I’m giving him a yes
Edited by papyru30 on Dec 5th 2021 at 2:53:47 AM
Yes to LeBlanc
Alright, giving the section a reread, here's what we've got:
- There's no indicators that anyone but Paul started the "feeding people to Grimm" niche. It's said that Paul betrayed and killed his criminal uncle to take over the entire business and...that's it, there's no further talk about his uncle or anyone else being to blame for starting the "feed randos to a Grimm" except Paul. Roman calls Paul out as pathetic for not personally capturing the Grimm, but there's no indicators that he means someone else entirely was in charge of the Grimm before Paul—just that Paul used his lackies to capture the Grimm for him.
So that leaves Paul...much the same as when he was proposed. A fuck-off crime boss with a nasty niche shown onscreen attempting to feed children to the Grimm, with the narrative and characters establishing it's Paul's idea, and he enjoys watching his victims—which are never given a concrete number, but implicitly "a lot"—die. Do with the info what you will.
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!- "The Fallen Idol" & "Camera Obscura": Marlon Hopgood uses his prop store to lure women where he has them drugged and allows his clients to sexually violate them, while Hopgood would film these acts before selling those non-consensual porn films. One example has Hopgood arrange the 15-year old Jessica Hamilton to be raped by Mark Bishop, while Hopgood would collaborate with June Ballard in using his film to blackmail Bishop. Hopgood is later seen trying to sexually assault women himself before fleeing by car when the cops spot him, uncaring if he causes collateral damage and casualties along the way.
Edit: Sorry, this thread moved incredibly quickly. I'm responding to Star's earlier post.
By the end of the scene, it's explicit that he was standing on the shoulders of his uncle and grandfather, that's why Roman loses all respect for him. We don't see him do it on page. He does try to do it, but he fails because he doesn't understand how Grimm work. He thought he controlled it because it stayed in the basement and killed the people he wanted killed. Roman figures it out extremely quickly, which is why he and the twins aren't in as much danger as it initially seems, which Roman is able to exploit.
As to niche, it isn't. Not for the heinousness standard, at any rate.
The Big Bad has been fusing people with Grimm — The Heavy (Cinder Fall) has been a Grimm-Human hybrid from the beginning of the show (although we don't know that until Volume 3). Now, that is niche.
On the good guys side, Professor Port released a Grimm he'd captured into a class of 17-year-old first-years to see if one could prove she had what it took to become a Huntress. That was her second day of school. Now, they're the good guys, so obviously Professor Port could kill that Grimm if things got out of hand, but that's our introduction to Professor Port.
In terms of the CM's that we already have for this work, Dr. Merlot is listed because of what he's been doing to Grimm and people. He's been capturing Grimm and experimenting on them, before unleashing them on unsuspecting humans just to test them. An entire settlement has been wiped out as a consequence of his actions. Even when he had his resources taken away, he still found a way to keep his experiments going (and the human deaths that ensued). Paul doesn't complete with that.
That Paul is a terrible person isn't in question. The context is competence, achieved feats and personal control. Roman pointed out that Lil' Miss faced her fear and overcame it, earning her control and the people's respect. Paul will not face his fear, does not control it, and he only has a gang because they're afraid of the Grimm rather than him.
As we're being introduced into the beginning of the P&M scene, we're introduced Paul Parrot's reputation, but only in vague terms. So, we know there's a reputation that people enter the basement and are never seen again. Unfortunately, that's all we're told at this point.
Once we meet Paul, and Roman starts learning the truth about what's been going on in the Parrot gang, this is where things start getting interesting.
Once Roman and the twins have entered the basement, Paul explains what type of Grimm it and where it comes from (it's not native to the region). He then explains that his family have been obtaining these Grimm for a very long time. Roman realises that these Grimm are how people are disappearing, which Paul confirms (that's the point where he locks the door).
It's while attacking the Grimm that Roman confirms that Paul never caught this Grimm, which sends Paul into his meltdown. This is the point where Roman tells him that he needs to be more daring because Lil' Miss faced her fears to gain control of her gang. While he's talking, Paul can't understand why the Grimm won't kill either Roman or the twins and is continuing to have a meltdown while Roman discusses his inadequacies. That's because Roman understands how Grimm work, but Paul doesn't.
When Paul has an enemy tossed into the basement (unfortunately, still no idea of how many people), he thinks that means he has control of the Grimm and that it's killing people on his command. That isn't what's happening. The person in the basement is frightened, which attracts the Grimm, and that's why it kills. If someone is standing in the basement, but they're not afraid to die (in this case, Roman and the twins), the Grimm has no reason to kill them. Meanwhile, Paul's meltdown is continuing, and the Grimm is very interested in that. So, it breaks out of the basement easily and goes to find Paul.
So, we have a bunch of incredibly vague off-screen feats, and a single on-screen failure that is portrayed as being because Paul had no idea what he was dealing with, and was so unable to handle the truth that he turned himself into a magnet for the very Grimm he believed he had under control.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 5th 2021 at 10:08:46 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.Ritter...exactly how many deaths is he responsible for? Granted, he seems worse than in the book; and doesn't have to compete with The Sum of All Fears since it's a Continuity Reboot; I just wanna make sure he's bad enough for an action film baddie.
Ritter is responsible for 30 deaths in the bombing (based on a news report), about 9 of Clark's men are killed, plus an unknown number of cartel member killed by Clark's men (at least two dozen from what we see)
Cortez is on my list (he may actually be a crossover) but I'm a bit to busy to get an EP up right now.
Edited by papyru30 on Dec 5th 2021 at 3:19:08 AM
@papyru I'd actually thought of Cortez long ago and didn't realize Ritter kept until now. He'd probably be too nasty for MB, but we'll see.
Ritter the first for Henry Czerny? He was also Eugene Kittridge of course. Not a CM, but a Hero Antagonist though.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Dec 5th 2021 at 2:24:50 AM
Yes to Ritter
And fair enough, but the main point of the niche comment is that a Mad Scientist experimenting on Grimm is gonna be on a different tier than some random crime boss locking people in a room with it with the express purpose of eating them alive. All this analysis about how Paul doesn't actually understand the Grimm is interesting, but it doesn't really change the fact that he's having people eaten alive while he watches from a camera - if anything, that makes him even more of a keep to me, because unlike Merlot, Salem, and others, he doesn't even understand the forces he's dealing with but has managed to build a reputation in spite of it, and failing because he underestimates his enemies doesn't really knock out the fact that as far as he knows, he's feeding two children to a Grimm.
And again, standing on the shoulders of the people who came before him doesn't mean anything when we're not given any indication anyone other than Paul started the tradition. When that's the main thing putting him in contention, any other indications of his power and influence don't really matter.
And comparing Salem's actions to him is... kinda missing the point. Yes, experimenting with Grimm happens here, but it happens with people who are equipped to handle that sort of thing - Salem is their master, while Merlot was a scientist who studied Grimm for his entire life. Paul is basically a random guy with a beast in his basement who locks people in there to film them being eaten alive, so yeah, it actually is a niche, and just blanketly saying "it's not" before comparing him to other people way higher than his level is a bit odd. Also, throwing Port into the mix is a bit confusing when A.) he's releasing a single Grimm on a student who is more than equipped to handle the situation and only struggles when she gets angry and distracted, and B.) Weiss volunteered to take it on, so it's quite literally a nothing situation.
Overall, Paul may be an incompetent Big Bad Wannabe, but that doesn't change the horror of his niche and the recent Offscreen Villainy relaxation only makes me more confident to say he keeps.
Yeah, my point was that everything in the book was so ridiculously vague that, once we get the reveal that he doesn't live up to his reputation and that others did the work, it deliberately makes the audience wonder how much of the reputation is him, his predecessors, or just the fear of the basement talking. I've never seen a character based on something so vague, that's revealed in-universe to be so pathetic, be considered so acceptable, which is why I had to ask about it.
So, I've done that; the consensus is to leave him on the page, so I think that's all sorted. I'll leave it at that and let you guys move on with other things.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 5th 2021 at 10:51:04 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.I don't, really think it's that vague. With the stuff about his predecessors, the idea they started it isn't really suggested by the story to begin with.
I was gonna make a bigger post about it, but this does seem sorted out, you've said on DM your standards are just a bit higher then ours and such, and that's understandable. He was a valid one to challenge(I was kind of expecting it) and it was nice to get some extra looking to verify, so Thankyou.
Bow to the PrototypeLooking at Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Roarke's certainly a Complete Monster, but what about his right hand?
Helga's right on his wavelength right up to the point he shoves her out of the blimp: even then, her Last Breath Bullet isn't meant to help the heroes, it's meant to kill Roarke. At no point does she have anything remotely resembling a Heel–Face Turn or any sort of mitigating factors. Her last act of spite just happened to wreck Roarke's plan and save Atlantis.
Just look at the exchange the two have when Milo points out that stealing the Heart will doom Atlantis.
Roarke: Well, that changes things...Helga, what do you think?
Helga: Knowing that...I'd double the price.
Roarke: I was thinking triple!
Edited by krimzonflygon2 on Dec 5th 2021 at 2:58:43 AM

Thinking on Doman,
.
A tentative
for Vilain.
Tentatively voting to keep Paul.