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 the Forgotten God.
Added Phyllis Crowder to the Drafts page:
- "Unnatural Exposure": After being made a scapegoat for the Birmingham smallpox outbreak, Phyllis Crowder (aka Deadoc) secretly spliced the virus with monkeypox to get her revenge through a pandemic. She starts testing the new virus on her own mother, ultimately killing and dismembering her to hide the traces of the disease, before sending contaminated beauty samples to the residents of Tangiers Island, causing three more deaths. While acting as a helpful assistant to Kay Scarpetta, Phyllis taunts her online with grisly photos of the crime scenes and eventually infects her staff, resulting in the death of Kay's assistant Wingo. When confronted by Kay after her sixth murder (a drifter she shot after he broke into her caravan lab), Phyllis coldly dismisses her actions as a "tit for tat", uncaring that she could have threatened the whole world with a new bio-weapon.
And here it is:
- Unnatural Exposure: Phyllis Crowder—aka Deadoc—after being made a scapegoat for the Birmingham smallpox outbreak, secretly spliced the virus with monkeypox to get her revenge through a pandemic. She starts testing the new virus on her own mother, ultimately killing and dismembering her to hide the traces of the disease, before sending contaminated beauty samples to the residents of Tangiers Island, causing three more deaths. While acting as a helpful assistant to Kay Scarpetta, Phyllis taunts her online with grisly photos of the crime scenes and eventually infects her staff, resulting in the death of Kay's assistant Wingo. When confronted by Kay after her sixth murder, a drifter she shot after he broke into her caravan lab, Phyllis coldly dismisses her actions as a "tit for tat", uncaring that she could have threatened the whole world with a new bioweapon.
Edited by ACW on Dec 19th 2021 at 6:26:41 AM
Forgotten God
What is the Work
Doctor who is a very, very, very long running sci-fi TV series spanning multiple works. It consists of a timelord called The Doctor who travels the universe (including others,) with his companions. Usually there is an arc build-up in each series but for this proposal it's just a one shot villain. Our candidate is "Mr Finch" in the revival series episode "School Reunion" played by Anthony Head.
Who is the Candidate and What have they Done?
Mr Finch is the leader of a group of aliens called the Krillitanes, a species of alien which would assimilate characteristics from other species and adapt it to themselves. Taking form of humans, Finch and his cronies infiltrated a school with Finch taking place of headmaster. Over time, Finch would have the staff replaced with more Krillitanes.
Finch enacted a series of reforms with the school's education to focus on more specific curriculums and provided free (albiet compulsory) school dinners. The school dinners were laced with an oil that increases brain power by a massive margin. Unfortunately for Finch and the other Krillitanes, the oil was toxic to them since they had assimialted that many characteristics from other aliens, as shown when one of them got it spilt on them and started dissolving.
Finch's goal with this was to use the children's minds at the school to crack the Skasis Paradigm, the fundamental building blocks of the universes to rebuild it in his image and for him and his cronies to become gods. If a child was seen to be not performing up to standard, they would be sent to Finch's office who then promptly would eat them alive as shown in the opening of the episode.
When the paradigm is almost cracked, Finch summons everyone inside the school, devouring the rest of the staff that were human in a "lunch break." When the Doctor realises what Finch's true goal was, Finch tries to coax him to joining him, saying that he could use the paradigm for good and bring back his species. When the Doctor eventually refuses, Finch sets his cronies on the Doctor and his friends to devour them alive, only sparing the Doctor to bring him back to him.
Finch and his cronies are eventually killed off when the oil drums explode, taking him and his cronies with it along with half the school.
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Finch doesn't seem to care about his cronies truly as one of them painfully died due to the oil and he doesn't make a comment on it. It seems more like you can become a god with me, if you die, oh well.
His discussion with the Doctor is the biggest problem for me, Anthony Head plays Finch as a heavily Faux Affable villain staying formal throughout, no matter whatever horrific deed he was about to commit. His speech to the Doctor, tempting him with that he could save countless lives with paradigm cracked but Finch himself never shows any sign that he himself would use the paradigm for good, just that he can become a god. It seems like manipulation especially taking into the effect about the Doctor being the last one of his species (at the time) and how he always tries to save everyone, even offering villains one chance at mercy.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
With the lack of resources he has, a school and the enhancing oil, I'd say Finch just about meets it with killing children who fails the standards of the class. The reason he chose to operate in a school was because he could utilise the children's imaginations to crack the paradigm and in the Doctor's words "they're not just using the children's brains to break the code. They're using their souls." Just so he could become a god and rewrite creation.
Final Verdict?
I'll leave it to you guys
Edited by WetFlannels on Dec 19th 2021 at 1:24:22 PM
What's wrong D-16? Rise up!
Finch.
And now, to close us out on Overlord...
What's the work?
Overlord II is the sequel to Overlord I and Raising Hell. It's a darker and more complex game all around, with revised mechanics, new mounts for Minions to ride, new spells to cast and and a new evil lair to explore and expand, this one deep in the bowels of the earth. The protagonist this time around is the Fourth Overlord, son of the Third Overlord and his Mistress, Rose. Unlike his (potentially) more noble and well-meaning father, this Overlord must choose not between being (sort of) Good or Evil, but between Domination or Destruction. He does this using a spell called Evil Presence, a lightning spell best described as Force Lightning if it was also the Jedi Mind Trick. With this and other spells, he leads his horde of minions against another force of Evil, the Glorious Empire, which can be described as the Roman Empire if they were aggressively hateful towards magic and fantasy creatures.
But this isn't about him. Yes, he's not Mr. Nice Guy, but he can't count because he has a Childhood Friend Romance with his first Mistress (Kelda) and potentially loving relationships with his other Mistresses, Juno and Queen Fay, and a fairly airtight Freudian Excuse of growing up without his parents and being abused and picked on by the inhabitants of the town of Nordberg where he grew up. No, today I want to re-introduce you all to...
Who is Florian Greenheart, a.k.a. Emperor Solarius?
Oh, boy. Where to start with Florian? Well, although we actually meet him near the start of the game, his villainy isn't revealed until near the end and it turns out his part in this game goes way back to a short time after the Third Overlord was trapped in the Abyss at the end of Raising Hell. After a heavily pregnant Rose left the tower to find a place for her baby and the Minions migrated elsewhere when no-one worthy stepped up to replace him, Florian went to the tower to steal the magical energy of the Tower Heart, the Dark Tower's source of power.
You see, Florian was born without any magical powers despite being an elf, who have inherent magic potential. So desperate was he to have magic of his own that he went to the Tower and tried to steal the Heart. His efforts proved futile as the Tower Heart became unstable, resulting in a massive explosion that devastated the surrounding lands, filled them with volatile magical goop and spread a magical plague that killed many and turned many of the survivors into mana-infused zombies.
The explosion, known as the Cataclysm, led to a lot of hatred and fear of magic among ordinary citizens. Florian did not get any magic powers from the Heart, but he was able to tap into people's prejudice against magic and rise to power as The Emperor of the Glorious Empire. Acting as the human Solarius and his pre-existing identity as Florian, who dressed like a New-Age Retro Hippie, Florian began a campaign of Genocide from the Inside on all magical creatures, posing as a leader figure to the elves and fairies working to safeguard wildlife and innocent magic critters while guiding his legions (and later, the Fourth Overlord indirectly) to invade the sanctums they form and kill or enslave anyone who gets in their way.
Now why would he do that? Well apart from wanting revenge against the elves because they teased and picked on him for not having magic, he wants to take the magical essence of all those creatures, use them on his citizens to keep them in line and ultimately take all the remaining power into himself to become a god of magic. And for good measure, anyone suspected of magic was exiled to the wastelands that were once Mellow Hills and the Tower from Game 1, usually motivated by "this person is inconvenient and must be disposed of in a plausible deniability kind of way".
As the game progresses, he opposes you a few times including during your initial boss fight against a Yeti you used to be friends with, and once you strike an Enemy Mine with the benevolent Queen Fay whom Florian serves under, he helps you gather the shards of the Tower Heart to use as a weapon against the Empire. He feigns being captured by Imperial troops to get away without rousing suspicion, and once the Overlord attacks his palace, using a recharged Tower Heart to break the anti-magic field his forces erected, he reveals himself to you again, pretending to be Florian only long enough to exposit his role in the Tower Heart's destruction the first time before outing himself as the true identity of Solarius, gloating about his actions and trying to ascend as a god...
It doesn't work. The magic rejects him and forms the body of a horrific Eldritch Abomination called the Magic Devourer around him. He then goes on a rampage, consuming his own citizens while his Dragon Marius screams his praises and shouts for people to be happy at what he's doing. After you do enough damage to him, Florian/the Devourer swallows Marius up. Eventually Florian's body starts getting vomited up by the Devourer, before the Overlord uses his Evil Presence spell to drain him of his stolen magic and Florian and the Devourer finally explode into a massive pile of luminescent blue goop. Puny god.
Mitigating Factors?
From what he claims, he wants magic power at any cost because he was bullied for being a Muggle Born of Mages. To that, I say what I said about the High Priestess from Samurai Jack Season 5 in response to a Draco in Leather Pants entry for her that said some fans think she has a tragic backstory of her own/is a Troubled Abuser: if it's true, it's tragic, but it doesn't excuse what he did. The game itself agrees with me. For all his claims of, "Eugh they all picked on me because I didn't have magic!" he was not only a respected leader among the elven activists we see in the present day but also Queen Fay's Number Two, and she genuinely cared about him as indicated by her care for his safety after his fake capture. Meanwhile, he very smugly gloats about killing all the magic creatures he wanted just so he could take their power from them for himself. Even while talking about the Tower Heart exploding he sounds like a whiny teenager complaining about how things didn't go his way, rather than showing any care for all the people who lost their lives or worse because of him.
He's not a Well-Intentioned Extremist either, the most obvious case of that being that he leads massacres against his own people and only ever talking about how his actions benefit him, and not anyone else. Even when he's cast out of the Devourer, he doesn't care that he just discovered Evil Is Not a Toy, only that he finally has some magical energy inside him now and may be about to reach apotheosis. So yeah, a Tragic Villain he is not.
Heinousness?
I said before he was the Overlord villain with the worst track record of damage caused to the world and I stand by it. Causing the Cataclysm and all that it entails. Annexing the elven island of Everlight as a colony for the Glorious Empire, turning his own people into slaves for the human invaders. Putting the overweight simpleton Borius in charge of Nordberg, which he managed so horribly that the people of the town actually accept you as their ruler just so they don't have to put up with the Empire's crap anymore. Massacring the already diminished magical creatures of the world just to increase his own power. The tangible damage he inflicts is catastrophic.
In terms of resources he has more than the Second Overlord, but less than the Forgotten God, being that he acts through his soldiers and snivelling toady governors like Borius, but he's still a Muggle and definitely not on the level of a god who rules literal Hell.
As ever, the only thing that feels like it could even come close to disqualifying him and the others is the actions of the Fourth Overlord, who does indeed have a nasty bodycount and can't be a true humanitarian like dear old Dad. However, I feel the need to stress that the time the game spends forcing you to be purely destructive is limited and mostly consigned to the Last Sanctuary level where you have to kill the magical creatures there to power up the Tower Heart, and even that is done with Queen Fay's blessing as a Godzilla Threshold move since there simply isn't enough magical energy left to do so otherwise. Every other situation, you're either fighting enemy soldiers or Evil Poachers, sneaking around to avoid detection or have the choice to force people to Kneel Before Zod with your Evil Presence spell instead of killing them. Again, you really only get the Overlord being as destructive as Florian if you choose to. The option to choose Pragmatic Villainy over Stupid Evil is almost always in your hands. I for one think he's sufficiently Eviler than Thou in actions, though not competence, to outclass you in this regard.
Conclusion
If no-one else from this series counts, Florian counts. At least that's how I feel.
And with this, the Overlord series is done. Glad I've finally got all the posts done.
Edited by MinisterOfSinister on Dec 26th 2021 at 6:39:37 PM
