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
After getting the new information,
Yaldabaoth. Not only is he Made of Evil, but he is also apparently not heinous enough because villains with the same powers are also Omnicidal Maniacs, so none of them really go the extra mile for the trope.
Edited by Misry6 on Dec 24th 2021 at 11:31:14 AM
Just an empty void…If we are going to make that Preacher page I have a few quote options (there is already an image).
Coltrane: Because it's fun. Two years back, I was driving home drunk when I ran a guy over. I got out to help, saw I'd killed him. It was four A.M.: No one around. I got back in the car and drove like Hell, and it was five minutes before I realized I was 'laughing fit to bust — 'cause I'd gotten clean away with it. So I began seeing what else I could get away with, and it just got funnier each time. Why? You were expecting some crap about getting raped by my dad? Or being a wolf that preys on humanity, blah-blah-blah? Anyway, don't scream, or the cops'll come and they'll get Jesse anyway. I'm gonna go tell Bridges about his lucky break. Then we'll head up to my folks' place, and I'll get them out of the freezer... and then I'll show you just how much fun serial killing can be.
If we aren't going to make the page these could still be good for the quotes page.
I've been meaning to say for a bit, but gonna throw in a late keep for Rolling Stones devil, even if it won't shift things around there. It seems like how the Devil is usually potrayed, as manipulating and tempting mankind into evil without flat out forcing them, and those bits of dialogue are him pointing out the latter fact rather then implying he had no hand in it at all
I hope I'm saying that right as I'm.....Not, feeling good today, my head is killing me.
Yes to Jean and the X Men guy. No to Garcia
Merry Christmas Eve y'all.
Bow to the PrototypeYes to Entity 01 (Emma a contender, or Made of Evil?); Balmondo; Hamilton Slade; Saint.
Entity. I'm sorry I missed out on this guy in the previous post with Jean and Garcia. But this is the last person remaining of the Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System for review. I just want to see if he qualifies with the other two for Case 1 (Kyoka) and Case 3 (Jean) before ACW comes up with his current rapsheet:
Yoshito Takaesu of Sinners of the System Case 2 - First Guardian
A colonel of the National Defense Forces, Yoshito oversees military operations outside of Japan's borders. Growing disillusioned with his losses in manpower and resources to maintain the Sibyl System's image of power, Yoshito brainstorms a means to easily secure victories and, therefore, salvage his own reputation that's on the line.
In a military collaboration with the Southeast Asian Union, Japan requests a task force (Unit 15 of the Joint Task Force to be exact) to assist in dealing with local military insurgents that threaten the confederation. Yoshito with a clique of military officers on board with his scheme, rigs the battle to be lost to test out a weapon of mass destruction in a way that the Sibyl System would fail to notice. Rigging pilot Teppei Sugo's air supplies, he is ordered to immediately fall back upon any delivery much to his confusion. With the circumstances of the battle, Unit 15 quickly runs out of munitions and requests air drop; Sugo comes in, does what he's told, and flies off.
The air package, upon opening, unleashes a sophisticated chemical weapon upon the area that decomposes all the insurgents and the unit that went facefirst to retrieve their supposed resupplies.
Writing off everyone involved as MIA and the battle lost, Takaesu sees the battle as a victory in his eyes, as he harbors a desire to subvert Sibyl's authority. When a vengeful widow of one of his victims rampages across Japan for his blood, suspicion is raised on Takaesu and his military clique, whose Crime Coefficient are noted to all be dangerously high. When confronted trying to make his own escape from Japan by detectives at the end of the carnage, Takaesu feebly tries to justify himself, claiming he has lost so much in his duty to Sibyl. Masaoka claims if he really was steadfast in his loyalty and duty, his Crime Coefficient would still not be high: At 340, Takaesu is deemed an overwhelming threat and executed by the Dominator.
Redeeming Qualities
Although he claims at the end the losses of his men was one of the reasons that made him act the way he does now, Takaesu subverts compassion when, to save his own skin from the rampaging Rin Otomo, uses his loyal bodyguard as a body double, taking advantage of him being brutally gunned down to finally put down Rin.
Heinousness
Deliberately sent innocent soldiers into a losing fight to mask the test run of a bioweapon of mass destruction, committing a horrific crime against humanity on both allies and enemies. Shows no remorse, covers up everything about what he did through lobotomizing military personnel too nosy on it, harboring intentions to overturn Sibyl (and therefore all of Japan) in a military insurrection
Edited by Sung-Hwan on Dec 25th 2021 at 2:37:09 AM
Are there any characters who are The Sociopath without being a Complete Monster? I feel like the two tropes go hand in hand
Edited by magnumtropus on Dec 25th 2021 at 4:02:08 PM
Tons.
Jean.
Hamilton Slade.
The Saint of Killers.
Takaesu.
Merry Holidays everyone. Was consdiering doing a Tim Curry Christmas EP but the candidate I had in mind (Forte) fell flat on a few factors despite sounding like this trope on paper.
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."

I don't actually have one based on the spirit of the holiday, but I do have another!
What is the work?
Preacher
is an unproduced script of (surprise surprise) Preacher, written by Garth Ennis himself. It follows Jesse Custer, as always, who is possessed by Genesis and gains the Word of God, which allows him to make anyone do what he says when he wants them to. Allied with his girlfriend Tulip and the vampire Cassidy, Jesse tries to find the source of his power, only to run into none other than the Angel of Death himself - taking a familiar name with a very unfamiliar rap sheet.
Who is the Saint of Killers? What does he do?
The Saint of Killers is the Red Baron name for the Angel of Death and he lacks any of his sympathetic or cool traits from the source. In life, he was a vicious killer who hated everyone around him and killed his way to damnation - and when he arrived in Hell, he continued killing his way through everyone he saw until God Himself intervened, offering him a job to get him to stop. That job? The Angel of Death - the current Angel could no longer stomach an eternity of killing, but the Saint could, so the Saint took his job and, with his guns, became a willing servant of God's unholy mission, including killing an Angel and Demon for the sin of falling in love.
When Jesse is later possessed by Genesis and gains the Word of God, the Saint is sent to retrieve the power, so naturally, he goes the There Is No Kill Like Overkill route. As Jesse is being arrested for something else, the Saint arrives and begins massacring any of the police in his way, gunning down the dozen or so police officers in horrifically sadistic ways that usually take out people's limbs. Jesse takes advantage of the distraction to escape, so the Saint comes up with a long-term plan to lure him in by taking advantage of Cassidy's loner status and bloodlust - to this end, he goes to a nearby bar and massacres everyone inside, luring Cassidy there through the strong smell of blood.
With Cassidy there, the Saint forces him to call Jesse and lure him back to Annville, shooting him in the stomach (supposedly lethally) when Cassidy tries to warn him that it's a trap. After this, the Saint makes his way back to Annville, where Hugo Root has rallied the police in one spot to try to find Jesse - in response, the Saint proceeds to massacre all of the police present for pretty much no reason, and when some of them start running, he blows up a nearby gas station. This not only burns many of them to death and then rains fire on the battlefield, but it sets several nearby buildings on fire, beginning a chain reaction that eventually burns down the entirety of Annville.
Soon after, Jesse and Tulip arrive in the city, and through a combination of Tulip shooting out her eye, Cassidy coming out of nowhere to ram him with a truck, and Jesse braining him with one of his own guns, the Saint finally goes down with one final "To Hell with you".
Any mitigating factors? Freudian Excuse?
This is a bit complicated so bear with me.
On the one hand, his sympathetic backstory seems to have been cut entirely if his Motive Rant is to be believed - he was a vicious murderer in life who continued killing his way through Hell after death, willingly became the Angel of Death so that he could continue, and happily massacres his way through anyone even remotely in his way in pursuit of God's agenda. Just as a further change, he's also the one who ends up responsible for the destruction of Annville rather than a chance gas leak, and he seems to end the script being dead from his own gun, long before he's supposed to kill God.
On the other hand, there's nothing necessarily disproving the sympathetic backstory (the potential family and God manipulations just don't come up either way), and the script ends incredibly early in the plot - Jesse only finds out that God's abdicated the throne in the last ten pages, and it ends with him and Tulip beginning their journey to find and punish him for abandoning them, which is pretty much the instigator of the original plot. However, with how different the script treats the Saint himself as well as the plot, I think it's safe to say that even if there had been more produced, it would have been different - when so much of the character's identity and even the pacing of the plot has been changed so much (when the man who literally kills God in canon is the Starter Villain here and goes down to a headshot), I think it's safer to assume that it'd be different rather than the same as in canon. With that, we can take him at his word, and thus no sympathy to speak of - rather than a former family man who was manipulated by God, we have an already terrible person who simply gained the power to become much worse.
Is he heinous enough?
Jesse calls him an errand boy and places the blame for the Saint's actions at God's feet, but that only holds up to a certain point. On top of already being a vicious killer in life who apparently killed his way through Hell after his death, his gigantic massacre of police at the end is 100% unnecessary and leads to an entire town being burned to the ground before Jesse even arrives in the area, much less while trying to get to him. I can kinda see the first police massacre and the bar massacre as parts of the plan (the cops were trying to arrest him and the bar massacre was a gambit to find him) and thus pin them on God, but destroying the entirety of Annville? That's 100% on him. With that, he becomes the most heinous baddie of the script, tying with God Himself (who is unfortunately just a bit too hands-off to count Himself here).
Final verdict?
I think a yes if only barely, what about you?