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, unless the story flat out says "they are brain damaged" I'm not thinking we should just discount anybody. I mean if they behave as though brain-damaged after the fact, that'd be one thing, but otherwise, I think it sets a rather bad precedent and could see the removal of some fairly prominent examples.
I've seen series where accidents and the like have damaged a character's frontal lobe and as far as I can remember from high school biology that determines things like decision making or inhibition. Which in effect means you can't think of right and wrong in the same terms as a person with a healthy brain can.
Or I could be totally wrong. I was in high school almost ten years ago now.
Well, if the incident took away her inhibitions, that still would technicly leave her with the ability to make choices, just no consunce. This would mean that even before her accident, she would still be willing to do what she did out of boordome, just for fun were it not for the inhibitions. Still seems like a bullshit excuse, like saying "the alchoel made me do it, it took away my inhibitions". Still iffy, but leaning slightly
.
Re: Livia Sas Juras from FFXIV:
The best trope for her is Love Makes You Evil. Her backstory is that she was raised by General Gaius, leader of the Garlean 14th Legion and main antagonist for that plot. Gaius himself is technically a Lawful Evil, Might Makes Right Well-Intentioned Extremist, to the point of him sorta helping the player character in the story leading up to the Calamity that set up the game's re-launch; he wants the Garleans to rule the world, not for the mad scientist to turn it into a cinder.
Livia's devotion to Gaius is her main motivation, though it's portrayed in a way that's obsessive, creepy and cringe-worthy. The language is more that of a clingy-jellous lover rather than father-daughter, and there's no real indication in-game that Gaius reciprocates her feelings.
Her attack and massacre on the hideout of the player's allies is a Player Punch in the main plotline and probably the main reason she was listed on the page.
Supporting evidence: her last stand and death scene
(skim to about 9:20 after the cutscene if you want to skip the boss fight, though she also has dialog during it), her FF Wiki entry
.
edited 18th Feb '15 10:07:47 PM by Elle
Have we ever discussed Ta'a Chume from the Star Wars Expanded Universe? I'm largely unfamiliar with her, but I know she makes a lot of "worst people in the Galaxy" lists among fans. I do know she's way smaller in scale than guys like Palpatine, Vitiate, and Onimi, ruling only a moderately-sized kingdom rather than being a galactic-scale threat, and that she has a habit of bumping off her own relatives, including kids.
Anyone know more about her?
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Ok, thanks. I do have a few more concerns, though.
- Heinousness standard: Bad Boss tendencies aside, we've previously ruled against characters who are acting as part of a greater organization, e.g. the Arbiter seen in Halo Wars. I don't see anything to indicate she takes a great deal of initiative beyond carrying out her orders, and the orders all come from Gaius. She's also not the only Garlean to kill subordinates - Nero's introduction has him summarily executing some hapless mook on suspicion of espionage. That's without considering Nael's shenanigans, which may or may not be worth mentioning depending on whether content that's been patched out should factor into the heinousness standard.
- Pet the Dog: The article says she's concerned when Rhitahtyn is killed, but not whether it's out of concern for him or fear that she could be the next to fall. More concretely - the first time we actually see her kill a subordinate comes off as an Even Evil Has Standards moment. She orders him to stop stabbing the hell out of a corpse, then shoots him when he fails to comply.
edited 18th Feb '15 10:21:49 PM by KyleJacobs
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I think she's more of a "horribly unsympathetic person" than a Complete Monster myself, but that's more of a gut feeling than anything else.
Ta'a Chume is awful, but doesn't really pass the heinous standard. She's unbelievably awful, awful, awful and has killed her son's fiancee, her eldest son, threatened the life of her great-granddaughter...but she doesn't have the major deeds that stack her where she needs to be. Ta'a Chume is awful, loathsome, vile and evil, but a CM she isn't. Her bodycount is limited next to others and before Motive Decay set in, she was doing everything for the betterment of Hapes (until it became about keeping her own power).
As far as Vitoria goes...I'm not objecting on moral agency grounds, but on the Freudian Excuse grounds. I really can't just dismiss the image of a terrified little girl being covered in spiders before she rises from the pit a shell that only takes joy in killing. No matter what she becomes, that's too much an excuse for me. I won't hold ill will for others thinking differently, though.
Nikkolas: I don't agree on Atropos. King's cosmology does have free will in the sense you choose the side you serve. There are fundamental forces in the universe, as characters like Roland, Father Callahan and otehers show. Even the Crimson King himself chooses to become what he is.
I'll reserve judgment on Livia till I hear the questions answered.
Now, my computer is having issues with a broken hinge, so I need to send it in for repairs. Bear with me during that time. I'll have some proposals and others. To keep track:
My promised effortpost on Light from manga and movie
General Herzog from Dead Snow
Prime Minister Honest from Akame ga Kill!
The killer from the 2014 remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Joa from Toriko
And Vladko Tyran and Hillary Masser from Killzone
And maybe a coupla others from a book I'm now reading.
The issue is she fails to even breach that. She's the queen mother of one of the most powerful independent monarchies in the entire galaxy. She's not even as bad as a few hutt crimelords or individual warlords.
She's loathed because her actions are so contemptible, given their direction towards her own family and the reasons behind them (utter selfishness).
edited 18th Feb '15 10:39:55 PM by Lightysnake
@Lightysnake
"I really can't just dismiss the image of a terrified little girl being covered in spiders before she rises from the pit a shell that only takes joy in killing."
I have trouble dismissing the image of a terrified guy plummeting into a vat of acid, but I don't object to the inclusion of any of The Jokers for whom that's the backstory. Vitoria's had at least a decade to stop killing, but hasn't. Instead she's just become increasingly bored, and is trying to find more exciting targets to kill. She doesn't present to me as a shell either, at least not in the present day. She's smug, she's full of herself, she complains of boredom, she gets excited over the prospect of new prey, etc. She's got a range of emotion, and is about as far from an Empty Shell as you can get.
Looking forward to those write-ups for Light, et al, and wish you luck with your computer.
Will do Antimatter!Brainiac and (assuming no further objections crop up), Vittoria/The Wanderer, tomorrow.
edited 18th Feb '15 10:41:29 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Said patched-out content is still part of the canon. However (based on summaries that I've read), Nael Van Damus' Omnicidal Maniac status was in part due to Dalamund and/or Bahamutt controlling him, and like I said, Gaius came out against him when it was clear that a: he was losing controll of Nael and b: messing with uncontrollable world-destroying ancient technology is a Bad Idea. The Garlean party line is that they want to unite the world under strong leadership and destroy "Eikons" - false gods, particularly the destructive entities known to the players as Primals (though the mostly-benevolent, hands-off pantheon of the Twelve in Eorzea also qualify). Stopping Primals is also one of the main player goals, but the Garlean answer to them involves straight-up killing anyone involved in summoning them and building technology that you, Kyle, will learn about in about 9 levels, while the players are given the power to fight them directly.
"Kill anyone who resists/steps out of line" is indeed par for the course with the Garleans; this is doubly clear in the 2.x patch storyline when we hear the fate of a nation that tried overthrowing their Garlean occupiers.
Anyway, I'm just laying out the facts of the story and will leave it to the thread to decide, but I personally don't think Livia has redeeming qualities and if she gets off, it's on a technicality...but my views are also colored by a general dislike of the character.
edited 18th Feb '15 10:59:24 PM by Elle
The issue with the Joker, though, is that we don't know what he was like before that dip. Alan Moore's version is one ordinary man who just has 'one bad day.' But even then, he's actively and invariably forgotten who he was before that. I simply saw Vitoria as driven too insane by that experience.
by contrast, Scott Snyder's recent run in Year Zero portrays the Joker as already someone who'd a budding monster and darkly warns Batman it won't be over before he throws himself into the chemicals. The current arc has been building him as almost inhuman.
edited 18th Feb '15 10:47:50 PM by Lightysnake
If it's been said before, it's been said a hundred times in this thread: The Joker is completely Depending on the Writer, nor are his stories a unified canon, and different instances of him need to be handled separately.
I was already aware of that, thanks all the same. Noting that his Freudian Excuse has rarely, if ever, been used to discount any version of him is still worth doing when discussing another character with a very similar Freudian Excuse.
@Lightysnake
The one from The Batman cartoons informs us that he was a completely ordinary guy, who following his "one bad day" became the monster we know and loathe. We still voted him up. And I don't disagree that we should have. All I'm saying is if we can ignore that Freudian Excuse, I don't see why we shouldn't ignore this one.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that a Freudian Excuse needs to involve either a) serious and obviously impaired moral agency, or b) systemic, longterm abuse of some sort, of the kind that completely wrecks someone's worldview. That's why I'm glad we took down Robert Quarles—after having been pimped out by his drug-addict father dozens of times, it's no wonder that there's nothing left of him. In this case, I don't think we're given any real evidence that Vitoria/The Wanderer has impaired moral agency, and the trauma she suffered certainly wasn't of the sort that inclines me to cut.
There wasn't any mention of it in game and I wasn't sure how official that info was, but I thought to check her blurb on the official promo site and it's there. Still, that's the extent of the detail given.
There are two conjectures that I think it's reasonable to make:
- Gaius probably created a lot of orphans in his career as the leader of the army in an expansionist empire.
- Gaius abhors weakness, which is part of the default "war orphan" stereotype. It's reasonable to believe he saw something in Livia that he respected since as far as we know, Livia is a unique case.
We don't know anything about her upbringing other than the fact she idolizes him. Maybe her past is something to bring up in the official forums, or next time the story team does a Q&A.
edited 19th Feb '15 12:10:16 AM by Elle

As a comparison, although he ended up not counting because he didn't quite stand out in heinousness, it's kind of a similar case to Norman Osborne in The Spectacular Spider-Man. There's only a couple of scenes that take place before Norman took the Green Goblin formula and although he's still a jerk in those scenes, it's not clear to what extent the serum warped his personality. Norman himself doesn't think so, but Word of God notes that he's not really reliable on this point (since crazy people don't see themselves as crazy).
So, it's basically a moot point whether the character was a monster before exposed to phlebotinium, since we basically only see them after they've been exposed to phlebotinium- and if they were a different person beforehand, that person no longer exists.