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
DCAU!Brainiac
My only qualm about DCAU!Brainiac:
- Generic Doomsday Villain: In JLU, Luthor accuses him of being one when he points out that Brainiac's purpose is to gain all the information about creation...and then destroy it for no other reason than that it's what he was programmed to do. Brainiac himself seems to come to agree on some level, as he agrees to merge with Luthor so that they can actually use that information to remake the universe in their image.
It's hardly an APV and more of a "Maybe if I didn't serve Zanza, I might have remorse." and the feelings are entirely Shulk. Dickson doesn't feel the least bit bad for what he had done. Just because the hero feels sorry for the villain, doesn't mean they deserve it and doesn't mean that he doesn't count. If that was the case, we might have to disqualify Kefka for Dissidia because Terra pities him. I think she also pities him in the original game too. If that was a disqualifier, we'd probably have to DQ a lot of villains. Didn't Simba feel sorry for Scar at one point, or am I remembering wrong? I know Firestar felt sorry for Tigerstar, but he's not going anywhere.
Going to abstain on Brainiac due to not knowing the work very well and the argument could go both ways.
edited 12th Feb '15 5:38:40 PM by Klavice
Alright, working on shrinking Dickson's Wall of Text...
- Dickson starts the game off as a seemingly helpful mentor and father figure to our protagonists, particularly Shulk and Dunban. This all changes after Shulk refuses to kill Egil after defeating him. Dickson shows up and shoots Shulk in the back, releasing his master Zanza, the true Big Bad. He then reveals that he's Zanza's disciple, and never cared at all for the people of Bionis, acting only to ensure Zanza was properly revived - then assist in his wishes to kill off everyone so he can enact the destruction/reconstruction of the world. Dickson tries to finish off the party with an army of Telethia, gleefully asserting that he's not brainwashed when they propose he is. When the High Entia army shows up to save the heroes, he and fellow disciple Lorithea convert them all into mindless Telethia, including Melia's brother, Kallian, whose remarks to his sister whilst transforming they promptly mock. Shortly after this, Dickson arrives in Colony 6 (now the residence of the surviving people of Bionis) with more Telethia, hoping to exterminate them all. He further taunts Melia, mocking her brother by proposing he might be her boyfriend in the next life. Ultimately, he reveals his motivation for his actions is that he wants to have the powers of a god in the next world. Thus, he willingly helps Zanza's atrocities with a sadistic smile on his face, no regrets or remorse, only feeling fear when it's hinted Shulk might be stronger than Zanza.
...dunno about word count, but character count-wise (including markup), that's 1592 characters, down from 2141.
Moon◊Yeah I'm going to say yes to DCUA Brainiac, I don't think he is a GVD.
Also I re watched Orphan to see if Esther counts, I am going to put spoiler tags on the effort post because talking about that character reveals everything about the movie, but I won't have spoilers if I do a write up on her, so watch out.
Who is Esther Coleman? What has she done?
Esther is an orphan adopted by the Coleman family in the film the Orphan. She appears to be 9 year old girl from Russia and seems very sweet and innocent at first. However she is really a 33 year old asylum inmate from Estonia that has a condition that makes her look like a child, she uses makeup and false teeth to maintain a more child like appearance. Her behavior becomes more disturbing as the film goes on. First she kills a pigeon, then she breaks the leg of a girl that was bullying her at her school, then she beats a nun to death with a hammer because she was worried the nun would expose her secret. She forces Max, the deaf daughter in the family, to help her hide evidence of the nun' murder. Daniel Coleman, the son of the family tries to get the murder weapon from the tree house that Esther hid it in, but Esther sets the tree house on fire and then tries to murder Daniel, Max stops her just in time. Esther tries to murder Daniel again at the hospital where he is recovering from the first murder attempt, by smothering with him a pillow. The doctors manage to save Daniel's life, but Esther is clearly putting a lot of effort into killing him. Through out the film, Esther has been trying to create a rift between John and Kate, the parents of the family, so that she can seduce John. When John rejects her advances, she violently stabs him death. Also near the end of the film, Esther is trying to kill both Kate and Max..
Is She heinous by the standards of the work?
Well she is the only villain in the film and she seems to be trying to murder everyone within in striking distance of her, so I would say yes. The reason why she doesn't have a huge body count like other horror villains like Michael Myers, is because she is not very physically powerful and relies on her cunning and the element of surprise to operate as a Serial Killer. She cannot break character as sweet little girl very often, because without her guise as a sweet, innocent little girl, she would be caught and arrested right away. She may only have two murders on screen, but she tried to murder the children of the family several times and the murders she did commit were brutal. Plus while this is off screen, it has been mentioned that she has murdered families that adopted her in the past, so I think this forms a pattern.
Does she have a Freudian Excuse or other sympathetic traits?
Apparently she was supposed to get a pretty good Freudian Excuse during the scripting phase, but that didn't make into the film, so no she doesn't really have a Freudian Excuse. She may be a mental patient, but she seems more like a psychopath then someone who is criminally insane, her actions are way too well planned and pre mediated to be the work of someone who was insane to point of mental incompetency. Esther manages to fool a therapist into thinking she was a normal little girl, she could not do that if she was criminally insane, that requires a lot of cunning and planning. She may Ax-Crazy, but she is not insane, she hide her true feelings behind a facade for a long time, that is psychopathic, not insane. You could argue that been a 33 year old woman trapped in a child's body is somewhat tragic, but the film doesn't play it that way. She actively makes herself look more child like and uses this guise to get away with murder, I don't think its tragic when she uses it to her advantage. Also considering she tries to murder every main character in the film, be they adults or children, I don't think she cares about anyone but herself.
Verdict?
I think she counts.
edited 12th Feb '15 8:49:13 PM by Overlord
I think Reynard from Reynard the Fox should go here. Here is how I suggest it should go: Reynard before the story even starts has shown himself to be a rapist and child abuser. Throughout the story he commits multiple brutal murders, including Chanticleer's wife and eleven of their children. He murders a hare and frames a ram for it. Reynard seems to have no morals and and even accuses his father and nephew, who was trying to help him, of treason to protect himself. And he gets away with it! Here is the link to the text. http://bestiary.ca/etexts/morley1889/morley%20-%20history%20of%20reynard%20the%20fox.pdf
Orphan is one of my favorite films. Esther does not strike me as overly heinous compared to0 other horror villains such as Myers, Kreuger, Fenton, the Djnn and so on, but than again, we DO have Henry, and she is at least as bad as him if not worse. She has no redeeming features, is played seriously, has enough characterization yada yada, but I am unsure if she QUITE meets the standard. Complete Monster is supposed to be reserved for the worst of all villains, and I am unsure if she just barely fails that level (just by an inch or so). She did intend to murder the entire family (at first just Max, Daniel, and Kate, but later John as well) and she is indicated to have done this at least twice before. Hmm... If we are able to count the killings of the two previous families (as we are not just told of them, but it establishes a pattern, and we see pictures of the fathers in her bible, and later, we see a family photo of one of the families) than I can give
.
If Alas, Poor Villain is a dis qualifier, then we ought to remove the Joker from the Arkhamverse.
Despite the terrible things he's done, the story still wants the audience to feel a little sorry for him.
If he isn't removed, then APV cannot be said to be an instant no-no.
for Esther.
Anyone have any other opinions on Shark
?
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Valid point on APV.
- Esther seems evil enough; if she attempts to kill the current family, that's enough of a pattern. Count me as leaning
.
- New Dickson is good length (I'll look at that this weekend, along w/ Nagash); please add to the YMMV page.
- Ditto Mick Taylor (a BIT wordy, but passable).
- Tonight/tomorrow morning I'll submit these
.
edited 13th Feb '15 8:45:24 AM by ACW
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Replaced the paragraph on YMMV.Xenoblade with the condensed one. Spoiler tagging might be a bit clumsy, though; didn't want to just completely white it out like the Zanza paragraph is, although I'm wondering if I honestly should have.
My vote on Dickson remains a
@Mr. Thorfan 64
That is not an argument, and we aren't just going to put somebody up because you wrote a write-up. Provide us with an effort post.
@Polar Phantom
Alas, Poor Villain is an instant disqualifier, thanks all the same. If the text wants us to feel bad for the character because of who they are then they are not a CM.
Conversely, if the only reason any sympathy is invoked is because of the uniquely horrible nature of their death, or some such, then that's not a diqualifier, but it's also not an Alas, Poor Villain. To bring up an example that Klavice loves to cite, the readers of and characters in the Warrior Cats books felt some horror when Tigerstar died, but that's because he was gutted and died nine times over, not because they were sad for him as a person. In Lord Brocktree, the audience might feel some shock and horror when Ungatt Trunn dies, but that's because he's left crippled and then shoved out into the ocean to drown, not because the story is trying to evoke any sympathy for him as a person.
@ACW
It's not a valid point on Alas, Poor Villain. I've seen the scene in question, and I can safely say I felt no empathy, because it's the goddamn Joker, and the game doesn't act like we should be sad he's gone.
edited 13th Feb '15 9:16:27 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Speaking for myself, I genuinely felt pretty awful about it, and Batman doesn't look particularly enthusiastic about it in the scene where he's carrying the dead body out of the arena either.
edited 13th Feb '15 9:23:05 AM by ShadowHog
Moon◊here's the problem...nobody else would be sad the Joker is dead. He has zero redeeming qualities, he does nothing to inspire or warrant sympathy, he is entirely unrepentant for his many, many, many crimes, and the only guy who feels bad has this...absurd attachment to preserving Mister J's life at all costs.
There is no reason for us to feel sad the Joker dies. Nada.
