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
Two weeks, TBMacho. You know the discussion date is two weeks. I just checked the recap and the finale came out today and I just got a giant spoiler for no reason. Hollering this.
You've been participating here for months—more than long enough to know that. Why is this still a struggle for you?
Edited by Scraggle on Jul 29th 2022 at 7:10:00 AM
What is the Work
Changeling is a 2008 biographical drama. Single mother Christine Collins returns home one day to find her young son Walter is missing, and calls the police begging them to find him. Five months later, LAPD Captain JJ Jones claims to have found her son; however, Christine quickly realizes that the boy is not only not Walter, but he is three inches shorter than Walter and was circumcised. When Jones refuses to investigate to avoid gaining any bad press, Christine attempts to seek outside help, only to find that Jones and the LAPD will do anything to avoid telling her story.
I have three candidates for the film, and the first is not Jones, but his superior…
Who is James E. Davis?
James E. Davis is the corrupt chief of the LAPD. Davis ordered the formation of what he dubbed the Gun Squad, consisting of 50 of the LAPD's most violent officers. Davis armed them with submachine guns and gave them permission to kill whoever got in their way; the result was untold amounts of carnage as they followed his words to the letter. And don't think that Davis did this out of any good intentions; he did it to wipe out the competition.
Under Davis's command, corruption runs rampant through the LAPD. Countless officers are actively involved in gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, and countless other crimes. Anyone who witnesses something inconvenient to the LAPD is locked in a mental asylum and held there until they admit to being mistaken. And if they don't, they remain trapped indefinitely.
Davis spends most of the film on the background, tacitly encouraging Jones's campaign against Christine and doing his best to spin the LAPD in a positive light to the news even as Christine's plight becomes a media sensation.
Does he have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
No. The Gun Squad is shown in flashbacks executing multiple unarmed men and dumping bodies in the streets, and dozens of women are shown unjustly locked in a mental asylum because of how the LAPD operates. While Davis isn't directly responsible for Jones's actions, he supports it wholeheartedly and clearly allows this behavior to persist throughout the LAPD.
There is a scene where he orders Jones to admit fault in the Walter Collins case and says that he will suspend him, but it's not out of any moral qualms. Davis states he's only doing it because he believes that admitting fault will get the news to move on from the scandal faster, and that he fully intends to reinstate Jones after the buzz has died down. It's pure Pragmatic Villainy, and nothing redeeming.
Does he meet the Heinousness Standard?
Absolutely. The corruption Davis allows to run rampant in the LAPD is clearly shown to have destroyed countless lives and flat-out ended many more, many on his direct or indirect orders. Mayor George E. Cryer is shown to have willingly allowed Davis's corruption and is complicit in it, but he only shows up for one scene and never commits anything as heinous as what Davis gets up to. And while Davis's many underlings (including Jones and upcoming candidate Dr. Jonathan Steele) are nasty in their own right, they only get as far as they do because Davis allows it.
Final Verdict?
Yes.
Edited by Bariton3 on Jul 29th 2022 at 10:28:18 AM
James.
- The Land Before Time fanfic Of Leaf-eaters and Sharpteeth (link
): Sharptooth is a member of the Sharpteeth species and is feared and despised by them for being responsible for the deaths of many dinosaurs. Sharptooth was enraged that the Sharpteeth and Leaf-eaters were getting along, and vowed to exterminate all Leaf-eaters and Sharpteeth traitors. Sharptooth attacks a herd of Sharpteeth and Leaf-eaters intending to kill them all off, leading to the death of Littlefoot and Chomper's mother. During the attack, Shartooth has an injured eye and hunts down the surviving children in order to kill them out of spite. After Sharptooth is done with the kids, he plans on purging the valley of all life, until it is nothing more than a desolate wasteland.
Yes to Davis. Tentatively.
I got a quick post of my own. One post here, one on the MB thread, both from the same movie: a Bela Lugosi movie called Bowery at Midnight. Lugosi plays our bad guy.
What has Professor Brenner/Karl Wagner done?
Esteemed psychologist, owner of a soup kitchen, beloved husband, and a total sociopathic mastermind driven only by greed, Professor Brenner—"Karl Wagner" being a fake name—is the mastermind behind a spat of recent and bloody robberies across the city. He uses his bowery as a front for his criminal activities, masterminding the robberies from beneath the poor homeless he's serving soup to.
What earns Karl his place here is his positively wretched attitude toward his criminal associates; specifically, his robberies have become known because he always leaves at least one of his associates dead afterward. Onscreen Karl makes a minion prove his ruthlessness by having him shoot another, begging mook dead; Karl later has this minion executed by an even more ruthless killer. He also throws one of his one men off a roof to make his getaway easier in one case.
Offscreen, Karl has murdered so many of his men he's literally filled up an entire mini-graveyard in his cellar, complete with impromptu wooden tombstones. Karl gleefully murders the innocent, too; when one of his own students clues into the scheme, Karl has him shot dead, tormenting the kid by asking him "what is the last thing a man thinks before he dies? What are you thinking?" He even murders his own wife to cover for himself, a wife who's done nothing but love him, and tries to order one more innocent woman murdered before he's betrayed by the doctor working for him.
You see...White Zombie style, Karl's abused doctor has been raising up zombies in revenge for Karl's poor treatment of him. Each one of these zombies is one of Karl's victims, and there's a lot—when Karl needs to escape, the doctor tricks him into going into the cellar, where Karl's many reanimated victims rip him apart.
Any mitigating factors?
None. The dude's got a seriously impressive body count for the standards of a no-budget, hour-long 40s noir. He's killed close to a literal dozen of his own subordinates, and he gleefully murders his own wife and student to put a cherry on the top of that.
Conclusion?
Keeper.
Edited by Scraggle on Jul 29th 2022 at 9:46:03 AM
Oh, Northcott's scenes with Collins definitely aren't redeeming. He does express some admiration for her, but it's in the middle of a blatant guilt trip in a desperate attempt to get off scot free. He does offer to tell her what happened to her son, but then refuses the second she arrives because he isn't willing to jeopardize his chances of going to Heaven. Any friendships with her is just blatant emotional manipulation
On second thought, I'm gonna let Northcott go. I rewatched his scenes, and while I do think he killed Walter, Lighty is right that he seems genuinely insane, to the extent that it clearly affects his agency. Sorry for bringing up a candidate who was already shot down, and for being that guy. I do have another candidate from the film, however.
Edited by Bariton3 on Jul 30th 2022 at 10:03:08 AM
Writeup:
Project: Snowblind: General Yan Lo is a cyborg supersoldier, who, after his cybernetics caused him to feel bad pain, decided to make the whole world suffer. Creating the Republic and causing the devastating civil war in Hong Kong, which led to many people dying, Yan Lo sends his troops to destroy the Liberty Coalition, killing at least half of it's members. Kidnapping scientist Joseph Liaw and forcing him to work for his "Project: Snowblind", Yan Lo planned to detonate EMP bombs in New York, Paris, and Hong Kong, destroying the world's technological hubs and triggering a new Dark Age, which would lead to all sick and disabled people dying, the effect that Yan Lo wanted to achieve, due to believing them to be weak and worthless.
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Jul 30th 2022 at 12:50:26 PM

Almost