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
Ah, I'd forgotten Marco wanted her as a Sex Slave. Yeah, I'm good with them both. Gross.
I have a quote proposal from Celenike Icecolle Yggdimillienia in Fate/Aprocypha
- Celenike cursing Sieg and fantasizing about raping Astolfo
People have multiple times posted lengthy arguments now...
In general I wish the thread would get more confident and explicit when something's being challenged. Humming and hawing to say "I don't think X keeps but I'm not opening re-discussion, just downvoting" is annoying and leaves me constantly having to come back to something I already successfully argued with no one actually presenting new info, just stating they don't like a decision.
Edited by 43110 on Mar 16th 2022 at 6:45:10 AM
One other Marvel guy I wanna get up because it just feels...timely:
What has General Milos Radanovich done?
Appearing only in issue #50 of the early 2000s Iron Man run, Milos Radanovich is a Russian war criminal who seized power in Serbia after the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union dissolved. Using technology he's purchased from Stark Industries, Milos Radanovich is pursuing an outright genocide, inflaming hatred between Christian and Muslim coalitions and provoking a war in the hope of seeing them both wiped out, with huge numbers dead.
Milos eagerly feeds the genocidal campaign with his own bullets; Tony gets to see a street full of innocent people gunned down to the last person by Radanovich's firing squad. A rebel he befriends tells us about another horrible atrocity we see through a flashback Shadow Discretion Shot; after having mangled her music-playing father's hands to the point he'd never be able to use them again, Radanovich raped and tortured her mother to death while forcing her and her father to watch.
In the last few pages, Radanovich launches a violent attack against Tony's insurgent allies in a machine he himself built, attempting to massacre every single insurgent there out of dozens. When the aforementioned rebel fights him, Radanovich tries to slaughter her, laughing that with a hundred women like her, he could breed a perfect army. Tony, appropriately feeling no sympathy for the Russian war criminal, blows him the fuck up.
Any mitigating factors?
I'm quite alike in Tony right now in that I feel nothing toward the genocidal Russian war criminal...like, Radanovich is pretty buddy-buddy with Tony at first, but that's because Tony's providing him with arms with which he's using to slaughter innocents. When Tony tries to stop him, Radanovich is happy to try and kill him. For one single issue, I'm feeling almost a little too well that Radanovich hits every single one of our qualifications.
Conclusion?
Easy keeper.
Edited by Scraggle on Mar 16th 2022 at 4:45:42 AM
Radanovich
Reminds me of Arkady Federov from The November Man.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."I mean, yeah, single issue, but he hits all the notes (no different than my Daredevil keeper the Cossack). That's a yes.
Also, that X-Files keeper shows that even if someone WON'T destroy everything, they can count if they think they will, right? Because the same Matthew Reilly keeper that gave us Bittiker also has a Nazi who tries to use a Supernova to destroy the world...only the part of it that would make it so destructive is fake...but the Nazi isn't aware of this.
Edited by ACW on Mar 16th 2022 at 7:00:19 AM
Yes to Radanovich
And following up the Brothers Grace, we've got their Dragon.
Who is Mr. Tune? What does he do?
Tune's real name is Augustus Tuneski. In the modern-day, Tune is the Brothers Grace's chief enforcer who is directly in charge of commanding their Shockers, but he's been a ruthless killer all the way back to World War II. In it, he fought on the side of the Nazis at the age of 10, to the point that he used the bones of his victims as a bicycle to ride around on, but now he's the chief official behind the Brothers' occupation of New York while he prepares for his "masterpiece". Everything they do, he's on the ground, from massacring the existing underworld leaders, killing witnesses to their crimes, and even attacking and killing cops following a torture session with the Punisher. Even when he's chased by the heroes and goes into a subway, he finds the time to kill some random people and horrifically bend their bodies as "sculptures", and at one point in order to force a judge to give a verdict they want, he kills the guy's cat as motivation.
Later on, as the situation starts to deteriorate, the Brothers' priests confront him with the fact that he spared the Punisher after a torture session as part of his masterpiece, so to "negotiate", he kills one and forces the other to run while he claims to the Brothers that they both fled for better opportunities. At the same time, he leads the charge and assault that kidnaps Helen, doing that particular act himself after taunting her with the knowledge that her brother is alive in a Shocker camp. After injecting her with truth serum, he gets the go-ahead from Polo to begin his masterpiece, so he (presumably) tortures Helen for a bit before leaving the Brothers as they escape in the subway. After drawing the Punisher into a fight on a tram, Tune reveals that he has a Dead Man's Switch on him - if he dies in their upcoming fight, then chemicals will be released into the air and water that'll turn the East River red and kill thousands of people. He even sabotages the fair fight by bringing in Shockers as he's about to die, daring Punisher to try to keep him alive and fend off his guys at the same time.
Luckily, the other Knights intervene, and Punisher and Daredevil manage to get the contraption off of him just before he finally dies, dying right after he realizes that his masterpiece will never come to fruition.
Is he heinous enough?
Easy thing out of the way - for a Dragon, he destroys it. He directly leads all of the Brothers' operations, leading to dozens of brutal deaths, and along the way he takes the time to sculpt the bodies of random people he sees and kills for no reason - he's been doing this all his life, even spending World War II riding a bicycle made out of the bones of his victims. Then, for his "masterpiece", he tries to goad Punisher into killing him so that a Dead Man's Switch will then kill thousands of people. Easy yep.
Any mitigating factors? Freudian Excuse?
Easy thing first - his loyalty to the Brothers is only for as long as their interests align. He doesn't hesitate to scheme against them when it suits his own interests, he kills one of their "priests" (someone they value because of how superstitious they are), and at the end drops them both like a sack of bricks to go fulfill his masterpiece. Simiarly, he briefly mentions that he has a "thing" about not killing cats - after he's just horrifically killed and mutilated a cat for no reason with the same amount of sadistic furvor as he does everything else, and he goes right into another topic with no shame.
However, there is one thing to discuss, and this is where Scraggle and I disagreed. In the third issue, he has a Love Interest - she's one of the Schockers, and she gets killed at the end of the issue and is never mentioned again. Now Scraggle and I both agree that it comes out of absolutely freaking nowhere and is a BLAM at best, but the question is if it's actually mitigating at all - quite honestly, I just don't see it. Even disregarding the absolutely insane power imbalance between them, all of their interactions to me come off as little more than possessive desire. He outright says that if she doesn't give him all of her love that he'll kill her, makes it clear from the very beginning that she is to do anything he says regardless of her feelings, even yelling at her in pure rage when she questions his plan after he saves her life because if the Brothers find out he did that, they'll kill her and her entire family (and he doesn't respond in the "I saved your life, at least be grateful" way, it's the "YOU dare to question ME" kind of way). Even when he claims that he loves her and kills someone on his side to protect her, he does it while belittling and controlling her, and even at the end when she gets killed by the Brothers for being defiant, to me he just looks more mad that he lost something he wanted instead of sad that someone he loved was just killed. Basically, to me, it comes off as just possessive desire a la Volgin, not actual love.
Now I'm not saying that the opposite interpretation is necessarily false (in particular, the face when he dies can be open to interpretaion), I just personally don't see it myself. For the sake of transparency, here's
all the panels that deal with this relationship so we can judge for ourselves. With everything to consider, I came away from this not thinking "well, he's got some humanity to him", I thought "oh great, so he's a giant creep on top of being a killer", so with all that plus the fact that she just never comes up again after her death, I personally think he's okay.
Final verdict?
Personally, I think yes, but I'm down for a discussion - what do you think?
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Mar 16th 2022 at 7:07:31 AM
Unfortunately while I think the Brothers Grace land, it's Tune's final expression of shock that kills it for me. You can genuinely care for someone in your own warped while while still being cruel and possessive; it's a more human relationship than he ever gets with anyone otherwise, and for all his threats to kill her if she gets out of line, he truly looks horrified when the Brothers Grace actually go through with, complete with his jaw having dropped in shock.
Reluctant, since he's godawful, but I'm a "no." Still, I encourage those to look at those panels and vote how they may.
Edited by Scraggle on Mar 16th 2022 at 5:37:04 AM
Dalton, Aerys, Crystal Ball, Angela, Ragyo, Dionysus, Simyord and Y'Garon, Mother, Karl rewrite, Grace Brothers, Milos, Mr, Tune (tentative).
Maxx.
Yes to the Brothers Grace and honestly, looking at it, Tune as well. His expression when his supposed "Love Interest" is killed is indeed ambiguous a bit on its own...but considering every single interaction they have leading up to that consists of Tune threatening her life if she doesn't love him, screaming at her that she "belongs" to him and will "do what I say", and snarls that the Brothers wouldn't dare touch her against his wishes? I, personally, think it's too far of a stretch to say it's anything but possessive care and shock that, yes, the Brothers will do what they want and kill her without first consulting him. It's only furthered for me that he then never once addresses her or her death again, lol. That's where I'm landing on it.
Edited by Ravok on Mar 16th 2022 at 5:04:49 AM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!Anyway, here's the writeup for the Critical Role version of Lolth.
- Lolth, the Spider Queen, is one of the Betrayer Gods who decided to ally with the Primordials during The Founding to plunge Exandria into chaos. Sealed away by the Prime Deities for their actions, upon being released, Lolth and the other Betrayer Gods decide to conquer Exandria for themselves, resulting in a war that wiped out two thirds of Exandria's population. After being banished to the Abyss by Kord the Stormlord, Lolth attempts to wipe out her former followers within the Kryn Dynasty for turning to worship The Luxon. Lolth has the nether gnomes enslaved, threatening to wipe out the race if they don't lure the Aurora Watch to be slaughtered by her followers. Soon afterwards, Lolth corrupts the daughter of Leylas and Quana Kryn into becoming a feral drider, resulting in Quana being forced to kill her own daughter. Even adventurers with no connection to Lolth aren't safe from her influence, Lolth creating an artifact, the Circlet of Barbed Vision in order to corrupt the minds of adventurers into killing their own party members for her own enjoyment.
So, I guess we'll make a "Franchise Wise" section for Lolth on the top of the Critical Role page.
Edited by Awesomekid42 on Mar 16th 2022 at 8:21:50 AM

They do literally everything together up until the final issue, but they’ve both got something over each other - Polo helps Tune with his massacre, while Marco plans to rape Helen to produce more Shockers. I don’t think it’s quite enough for separate entries, but I also don’t think that Polo quite disqualifies him based on quantity vs. quality
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Mar 16th 2022 at 6:11:16 AM