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
Yeah, kinda took me off guard too. Note that sadly he's actually a Karma Houdini—IIRC last panel is him surfacing and vowing revenge, albeit hideously mauled. It's been fucking years since we've seen him and his appearance in the live-action Batwoman probably won't compel anyone to bring him back anytime soon.
Also, obligatory shill—STAR and I are gonna be done combing Comics' Greatest World (and its short-lived reboot Project: Black Sky) relatively soon. Get a page ready. We're probably gonna have around twenty or more candidates if these guys all hold up (no, the qualifiers from The Mask don't count toward that—sadly, although Predators are canon in CGW, the Mask's bloody origins aren't actually part of The 'Verse despite being published under the same imprint).
Edited by Scraggle on May 25th 2022 at 12:20:41 PM
Oh so much more than that
especially Ghost (Dark Horse Comics) and X
to Menace
What about David
at the moment?
kinda missed that, my apologies.
Edited by Powermaster201 on May 25th 2022 at 3:24:22 PM
Oh, so like 20 in 270 or so issues? Yeah, that seems reasonable.
2 more questions
- Any current keepers that will be a part of that page?
- I may be missing something, but what does The Mask have to do with Predators, unless that's a different Predator.
And of those 20 we've got so far, I'm pretty unconfident on 2 of them - they're from Ghost and they're some of my usual "might not make it but might as well try"
I don't think any current keepers will be on the page, but Scraggs knows more than I do
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on May 25th 2022 at 2:50:11 PM
No current keepers, no. Nobody's even mentioned the series on this thread before.
I mentioned The Mask comic because it was published under the same imprint as CGW, and it actually does have two keeps listed IIRC, but they don't actually take place in CGW's canon.
But Predators—yes, Yautja—totally do. One of them kills off a Big Bad who guaranteed is getting a post here.
Edited by Scraggle on May 25th 2022 at 12:53:41 PM
We do already have the Alien vs. Predator page though, so not sure how that will be done.
Yes to the Menace, and definitely looking forward to more posts, y'all!
Quickie one for us:
What's the work?
Fables is a comic created by Bill Willingham, taking place in a world where fairy tales and fables exist in worlds and cities parallel to our own, oftentimes crossing over and getting involved in mishy-mashy fantasy-schmantasy mischief.
The Wolf Among Us is a story-based CYOA game created by Telltale Games based on the Fables comics, showing a noir story of Bigby Wolf—the "Big Bad Wolf"—as a private investigator snooping around for clues and criminals tied to a string of murders and mayhem plaguing "Fabletown."
Fables: The Wolf Among Us (Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs for the win, bb) is a sort of comic adaptation of the above game, chock full of extra prequel backstory for characters and even some notable story beat changes. A comic, inspired by a game, inspired by a comic, I love it!
Who is the Knave of Hearts? What has he done?
Bloody Mary, in Wolf Among Us's plotline, is the Ax-Crazy Dragon to the Big Bad Crooked Man, Mary a nightmarish psychopath of blood and death...the Knave is responsible for what she's become, as the comic adaptation details.
A womanizing crook from Wonderland who stole valuable tarts and other treasures for his own greed, the Knave of Hearts quickly realized he had incurred a bit more attention from the authorities than he wanted, and decides to concoct a particularly nasty scheme to ensure his evasion of any form of justice.
Using the magics of the Looking Glass kingdom to supernaturally contact young, naive Mary through mirrors in her surroundings, the Knave went about manipulating and seducing Mary into falling for him before magically impregnating her...and while Mary herself felt all of the pains and agony of pregnancy, it was her reflection that became truly pregnant, given personification by the Knave's machinations as Mary has her life force drained to feed the reflection's growing pregnancy.
Once the baby is ready to be birthed,the Knave forces the real Mary to take on all the anguish and suffering of the process as her reflection tries to birth the baby...the Knave quickly gets pissy and reveals his true, abusive colors when Mary is "taking too long", and proceeds to use a piece of glass to carve the reflection's stomach open in the shape of a heart as a sadistic calling card, bite and tear the umbilical cord right out of her, and reveal the truth: the baby is, in fact, a cursed glass baby, specifically impregnated into Mary for the express purpose to be sold off on the black market as an ingredient for spells. The Knave has tried before to birth one at the cost of the lives of the women he has tricked, and he plans to sell the glass baby to get rich and buy passage to somewhere far away from Wonderland so he'll never face consequences of his crimes there. The Knave then leaves Mary and her now fully-realized reflection to die from the impromptu C-section, mocking them both all the way.
Luckily, though the real Mary dies, her reflection survives and hunts down the Knave, tricking him into handing over the glass baby long enough for "Bloody Mary" to smash it to bits and use the glass to castrate the Knave. And though the Knave smugly proclaims he has impregnated even more women as backups should Mary have failed, "Bloody" Mary promises to ensure the Knave suffers for his crimes by hunting down and slaughtering every woman the Knave seduced and impregnated.
Much later, the Knave is recruited by the Crooked Man in a plot to take control of a kingdom, and though the Knave mostly just behaves like an absolute dickwad to everyone, he has two notable bits to tack on: he verbally and psychologically abuses a man into killing himself as part of the Crooked Man's schemes, and the Knave also has a "lover" he has mentally decimated into his broken slave, who he abuses daily and forces to put glass together piece by piece until her hands are bleeding raw.
The Knave never faces any real, on-page retribution for his crimes weirdly enough, the comic ending on a Sequel Hook that never actually came about. And I doubt the actual game's upcoming sequel will tie into it in any way, so....oh well!
Mitigating features?
Nooooope. Total self-absorbed prick whose solution to avoid punishment for being a thief is to seduce and endanger countless women so he can steal babies to sell to be made into potion materials lmao he ain't exactly a complex dude. He does let Bloody Mary hold the glass baby when she comes for him—which winds up enabling her to smash it to bits—but he's explicitly just trying to get her to leave him alone without attacking or causing him trouble, being flat out annoyed at her motherly proclivities and letting her hold the baby in the hopes she'll get over it lmao
Heinousness?
Uhhhh ok so the comic is already pretty debatable in its canonicity to mainline Fables stuff, but even for Fables? The Knave is performing a mass manipulation and impregnation scheme that is draining the life forces of potentially dozens of women to turn them into breeders for his cursed glass babies so he can sell the babies on the black market and leave the women at best emotionally and physically broken, at worst flat-out dead from his abuses. He carves the baby right out of Mary and leaves her gutted to die, and his later broken wife only further pushed home was a nasty, misogynistic pig the Knave is.
Final Verdict?
Yee
Edited by Ravok on May 25th 2022 at 1:23:06 AM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!Sounds like a pretty sickeningly easy yes to the Knave of Hearts. Why is that particular character subject to such grotesque Adaptational Villainy? The fucking Disney one with Tim Burton was no saint either.
Yes to the Knave. I assume this backstory is why Mary doesn't count?
Also..."'Bloody' Mary promises to ensure the Knave suffers for his crimes by hunting down and slaughtering every woman the Knave seduced and impregnated"...Um, how would killing the women make the Knave suffer? Aren't they victims themselves?

Also, wait, I just re-read the EP...there's a lake monster??