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Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

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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:

     Previous Post 
Complete Monster Cleanup Thread

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. "[tup] 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

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#39751: May 23rd 2015 at 6:03:00 AM

Thank you randomtroper 89 smile. He got an entry down from

* House of the Scorpion: El Patrón (the original Matteo Alacrán) is the most powerful and evil drug lord of them all. El Patrón rules over the country of Opium and punishes anyone who tries to illegally cross his borders by capturing them and implanting computer chips in their brains, turning them into eejits. These eejits are essentially human robots, programmed to do certain tasks all while their thoughts and emotions are repressed by the computer chip. Even El Patrón's security team and certain staff members have been implanted with chips, turning them into high-functioning eejits bound to El Patrón's will. The most common usage of "dumb" eejits is for manual labor in the fields used to create his drugs. Due to the harsh conditions and poor care, they tend to have a low life expectancy, leading to hundreds of thousands of bodies being buried beneath the poppies. El Patrón, like many drug lords, keeps himself alive by harvesting organs from clones. Unlike most drug lords, however, El Patrón doesn't destroy his clones brains, instead he raises them like they were his own children. He pretends to care about them and their future, lavishing them with gifts, all because he sees them as extensions of himself and views their happy childhoods as stand-ins for the one he never got. When the time comes, he harvests and kills them without hesitation, all to extend his nearly one hundred and fifty-year-old life. El Patrón cares for no one but himself and sees everyone around him as his possessions. The dead siblings he pretends to mourn he only valued, not for who they were, but because they were his. In the end, after his death, he still manages to murder everyone close to him, his entire family, his friends, and most of his staff, by poisoning the wine they drank at his funeral. He also coded the deadly force fields surrounding his country to only be dismissed by his DNA. Meaning that when he died and the country went into lockdown, nobody could leave and no supplies could get in. His ultimate reason for this was to murder his entire country just to have a "fitting tribute" to take with him into the afterlife, just like the kings of old.
to
* House of the Scorpion: El Patrón (the original Matteo Alacrán) is the most powerful and evil drug lord of them all. El Patrón rules over the country of Opium and punishes anyone who tries to illegally cross his borders by capturing them and implanting computer chips in their brains, turning them into eejits. These eejits are essentially human robots, programmed to do certain tasks all while their thoughts and emotions are repressed by the computer chip. Even El Patrón's security team and certain staff members have been implanted with chips, turning them into high-functioning eejits bound to El Patrón's will. The most common usage of "dumb" eejits is for manual labor in the fields used to create his drugs. Due to the harsh conditions and poor care, they tend to have a low life expectancy, leading to hundreds of thousands of bodies being buried beneath the poppies. El Patrón, like many drug lords, keeps himself alive to nearly one hundred and fifty-years old by harvesting organs from clones. Unlike most drug lords, however, El Patrón doesn't destroy his clones brains, instead he raises them like they were his own children, only to harvests and kill them without hesitation when the time comes. El Patrón cares for no one but himself and sees everyone around him as his possessions, such as the dead siblings he only valued because they were his. In the end, after his death, he still manages to murder everyone close to him by poisoning the wine they drank at his funeral. He also put his country into lockdown with deadly force fields only to be dismissed by his DNA, leaving them to starve as a "fitting tribute" to take with him into the afterlife, just like the kings of old.
. Still wordy, but now from over 370 to under 300.

edited 23rd May '15 6:03:25 AM by ACW

Morgenthaler Since: Feb, 2016
#39752: May 23rd 2015 at 6:09:48 AM

I've wanted to bring up this candidate for a while now, as I've had to think about it and rewatch a lot of the work to be clear on how the show plays various things, so excuse the amount of detail below-it's important to thoroughly establish the world and characters. The animated Funny Animal series Alfred J. Kwak has one potential qualifier, a rarity for a kid's show. I don't take that lightly, as my past proposal of Steele is a rare example for family-oriented works which tend to fail in at least one area, most of them for simply not being able to deal with the subject matter that could get one on this trope.

This one, however, is remarkably mature and outside the more fantasy-heavy episodes deals with themes like Apartheid, an absolute monarchy transitioning to a democracy, Third World poverty, the rise and fall of Fascism, pandemics and disease, and environmentalism. Alfred grows from a hatchling to an adult throughout the series, eventually falling in love and becoming involved in politics and other world problems. In general, there is no Never Say "Die" approach. While something as explicit like showing a corpse is off the table due to the target audience, aside from one case of a villain being disposed through Harmless Freezing, the pandemic is explicitly deadly, villains may occassionaly try to commit murder (e.g. premier bad guy Dolf at one point tries to kill an informant in a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness moment), and the orphaned protagonist's parents and siblings are essentially killed off in a road accident by Gory Discretion Shot in the first episode.

Most bad guys fail in one way or the other. Alfred's Arch-Enemy Dolf is a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up who becomes a thief, arms dealer, and Hitler analogue when he seizes power in a fascist coup d'etat. Despite his refusal to repent for his crimes his Freudian Excuse is pretty bad however, with him being broken up about his mother dying when he was a kid, his father's implied (stated, but not shown) alcoholism, and a pretty severe case of Internalized Categorism and fear of rejection (he's half-crow half-blackbird through his father and mother respectively, but he paints his yellow beak black to hide this). There's another recurring villain, Krabnagel, who in a more adult work would be quite monstrous, as he's a fugitive cat who eats small children. The show just portrays him as somewhat mean however, and doesn't address his eating habits; when he's arrested by the cops at one point, he's held for other crimes (breaking and entering). He's also played for laughs from time to time. Other villains fail the heinous standard, like a Corrupt Corporate Executive crocodile mayor who tries to hunt fish (who can also talk, by the way) to extinction but loves his wife, and a jellyfish spy who just sells intelligence for a good prize. One of Dolf's friends, a goose who is involved in the Apartheid regime in the South-Africa expy, becomes The Atoner when he feels that Dolf has crossed the line by engineering a flood to win an election. There aren't really any other villains of note.

The one exception is a one-shot villain from an "Arabian Nights" Days two-part episode, the Evil Genie of Darkness. He's an immortal spirit from a Middle Eastern country who enjoys tormenting its inhabitants, "causing droughts, floods, epidemics, fires, and so on" for his own pleasure, shown in flashback. His crimes eventually anger the God/Allah of the empire so much that He locks him inside a bottle as punishment. The bottle is found in the desert several centuries later by a random traveler, whom the genie promises to reward with riches if he lets him out. Except when he does, the Genie reveals that he had pledged to devour whoever shall release him to spite the God who imprisoned him. The traveler manages to get the Genie back inside by Tricking the Shapeshifter, until the bottle manages to come in Alfred's possession several more centuries later. Alfred and Dolf open the bottle, only for the Genie to try to eat them both as well. He lets Dolf go when he tells him that Alfred 'really' released him, but I can't say this is played as redeeming. The Genie simply wants to fulfill his promise to the letter by eating his savior and no one else, then specifically go back to his home country to wreak havoc there again. It's not that it's too evil for him, it's personal spite towards the God and the Arabians. His moral agency is never a topic of discussion, but it's doubtful that it's impaired in a Made of Evil kind of way. The fact that the God (who also appears only in this episode) intervened to punish him the way one would punish a criminal (so like Eru Illuvatar's intervention against Sauron, essentially) would presumably indicate that he actively chose to do evil. His actions are played completely straight.

So, in short, this is a rather minor character who does seem like he fits the criteria after a thorough evaluation. Thoughts or comments?

edited 23rd May '15 6:44:30 AM by Morgenthaler

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#39753: May 23rd 2015 at 6:12:45 AM

Genie seems like a [tup]. Hell, it seems like Dolf (subtle much?) may qualify. Red Skull had a miserable childhood, and he counts.

VeryMelon Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#39754: May 23rd 2015 at 6:20:16 AM

I'm not seeing what the problem with putting up Thawne is. He has 7 yes votes to 2 no votes and for now his arc is closed. If the same Thawne(not just the real Wells) comes back in season 2 I will be more than happy to cut him under certain circumstances.

ST89 Since: Feb, 2015
#39755: May 23rd 2015 at 6:49:27 AM

Aboit Delmar: it was just Kynette who shot one of Hal's friend if I remember right. Delmar just watched in amusement and then handed him another weapon. The rest is correct.

edited 23rd May '15 6:52:01 AM by ST89

randomtroper89 from The Fire Nation Since: Nov, 2010
#39756: May 23rd 2015 at 7:55:13 AM

@ACW: Your welcome. I'll try to shave down Gregor Clegane too.

[down]Better?

edited 23rd May '15 10:48:13 AM by randomtroper89

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#39757: May 23rd 2015 at 8:31:07 AM

I'm not Morgenthaler tongue

edited 23rd May '15 8:31:15 AM by ACW

AustinDR Lizzid people! (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Lizzid people!
#39758: May 23rd 2015 at 8:35:45 AM

[tup] for the Genie.

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
speyeker Since: Jan, 2001
#39760: May 23rd 2015 at 8:46:16 AM

I actually thought of something else related to Eobard Thawne/Reverse Flash that makes me reconsider, and that's in terms of heinousness.

Obviously, on a personal level, his depravity is unmatched—what he did to Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan, as well as his vow to personally kill not just The Flash but everyone The Flash is close with. However, remember before how I made the comparison to Glory, in that they both just want to get home but are willing to do horrific things to achieve that goal? The difference is that Glory commits horrific acts not *just* on a personal level, but the very act of returning home will have a side effect that destroys the world. Master Xehanort is also similar, in that the end goal is not in of itself evil, but he is willing to do horrific things on a personal AND global level to achieve it ("global level" meaning that, like Glory, achieving the goal will inadvertently cause the apocalypse as a side effect).

On the other hand, Eobard Thawne's crimes don't really approach anything of this global threat. Yes, in the season finale he is *risking* a black hole that will destroy the universe, but unlike with the above two examples, this apocalypse isn't certain, and he's certainly banking on it *not* happening; and besides, even after the heroes learn of this risk, *they* still go through with it as well. Finally, we should remember Mark Mardon in "Out Of Time", who hates Joe with a passion the same way Eobard hates Barry, and decides the best way to get revenge on Joe is to wipe out all of Central City with a tidal wive while Joe is forced to watch. Eobard Thawne never deliberately does anything approaching that magnitude, so even within the context of the show there's possibly a precedent for greater heinousness.

So, I'm not sure. I guess I can leave my [tup] vote in, but I do want people to consider the points I've just made.

edited 23rd May '15 8:46:29 AM by speyeker

emperors Messenger from another dimension. Since: Mar, 2015 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Messenger from another dimension.
#39761: May 23rd 2015 at 8:55:42 AM

@ ST 89 It was Kynette who shot Hal's friend. My entry said it. So, does anyone else object to Delmar's addition? If not, I will request ACW to tweak him.

Welcome to the world of greatest media!
PolarPhantom Since: Jun, 2012
#39762: May 23rd 2015 at 9:21:50 AM

[tup] to Immortan Joe. Very well put, Lighty.

EDIT: I like to describe him as being a symbol of Tyrannical Patriarchy at its very worst.

edited 23rd May '15 9:45:25 AM by PolarPhantom

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#39763: May 23rd 2015 at 10:29:53 AM

Okay, this whole 'shaving down thing?' I don't like it. As you've been told time and again, ACW, these entries were written and approved and I don't like or appreciate you constantly trying to alter things based on nothing more than your personal taste. It's constant in this thread.

KyleJacobs from DC - Southern efficiency, Northern charm Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: One True Dodecahedron
#39764: May 23rd 2015 at 10:35:00 AM

Give it a rest, lighty. Nothing wrong with trying to keep things concise.

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#39765: May 23rd 2015 at 10:39:56 AM

No, I won't. These entries were all written up, approved, voted on and allowed in, and some people are constantly trying to rewrite them without anything resembling a large group consensus based on nothing more than their personal taste, just like this nonsense with the subpages and whatever else.

It's tiresome and I've had enough of it. Stop trying to shave them down when there's nothing wrong with them. It's the same as forcing every entry to have the title first because of personal preference, potholing everything to hell and back, and now ACW is trying to force an arbitrary wordcount on entries after approval, in addition to the subpage stuff?

I've had enough of it.

Scraggle Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#39766: May 23rd 2015 at 10:43:44 AM

I'll give a [tup] to the genie. Dolf does not count if his excuses actually adds sympathy to his character, and from what I've heard, unlike Red Skull, he's not evil enough for his actions to outweigh the sympathy of his excuse.

edited 23rd May '15 10:44:33 AM by Scraggle

randomtroper89 from The Fire Nation Since: Nov, 2010
#39767: May 23rd 2015 at 10:49:56 AM

The El Matron example was very bloated, and I was able to cut it down while keeping most of the content. Clegane on the other hand, had very little I could remove.

VeryMelon Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#39768: May 23rd 2015 at 10:53:45 AM

I swore we had this discussion about trimming examples before.

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#39769: May 23rd 2015 at 11:07:58 AM

Okay, time to defend myself:

  • I'll concede arbitrary, but it's not just my personal taste. Morgenthaler I know said he'd try to trim some down, and even Septimus is starting to get annoyed. Look, if people are willing to take the time to condense, and then those get approved, what's the issue?
    • And BTW, I'm not submitting the trimmed entries yet; I'm letting people look over them first. Plus there's the "clear, concise" part (not sure witty applies here).
  • For the potholing, if you think it's too much, say so. There's a reason I wait two days before submitting my tweaks.
  • As for "forcing every entry to have the title first because of personal preference," we can not do that any more if the thread wants.

Is everyone okay with this to submit tomorrow?
  • House of the Scorpion: El Patrón (the original Matteo Alacrán) is the most powerful and evil drug lord of them all. El Patrón rules over the country of Opium and punishes anyone who tries to illegally cross his borders by capturing them and implanting computer chips in their brains, turning them into eejits. These eejits are essentially human robots, programmed to do certain tasks all while their thoughts and emotions are repressed by the computer chip. Even El Patrón's security team and certain staff members have been implanted with chips, turning them into high-functioning eejits bound to El Patrón's will. The most common usage of "dumb" eejits is for manual labor in the fields used to create his drugs. Due to the harsh conditions and poor care, they tend to have a low life expectancy, leading to hundreds of thousands of bodies being buried beneath the poppies. El Patrón, like many drug lords, keeps himself alive to nearly one hundred and fifty-years old by harvesting organs from clones. Unlike most drug lords, however, El Patrón doesn't destroy his clones brains, instead he raises them like they were his own children, only to harvests and kill them without hesitation when the time comes. El Patrón cares for no one but himself and sees everyone around him as his possessions, such as the dead siblings he only valued because they were his. In the end, after his death, he still manages to murder everyone close to him by poisoning the wine they drank at his funeral. He also put his country into lockdown with deadly force fields only to be dismissed by his DNA, leaving them to starve as a "fitting tribute" to take with him into the afterlife, just like the kings of old.

edited 23rd May '15 12:00:59 PM by ACW

Irene (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
#39770: May 23rd 2015 at 11:36:47 AM

Many entries are bloated and need trimming down. Doesn't matter if they were put up beforehand or not. As a Wiki, we constantly fix up entries when standards change or we see issues later. As long as they remain clear, concise, and include all the key information, redoing an entry is fine. There should never be a time limit on these things overall. That just puts an unnecessary restriction on the whole spirit of the wiki itself, which is continuing to improve it slowly but surely. It can be pretty difficult at times to do so(I am not known for being good at this kind of stuff. I am pretty wordy myself). That's why I prefer to vote, not make entries.

Shadow?
bobg Since: Nov, 2012
#39771: May 23rd 2015 at 12:03:49 PM

Kazuya already got two [tdown] from Emperors and Very Melon. I also don't think he qualifies. Does anyone mind if I cut him from the ymmv sandbox?

jjj
ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#39772: May 23rd 2015 at 12:05:22 PM

If you do, please don't forget to also cut him from the YMMV itself.

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#39773: May 23rd 2015 at 12:17:26 PM

There's a difference between bloat and "it's over an arbitrary limit I deem necessary". Bloat indicates unnecessary details. Some monsters require bigger writeups due to needed context, explanation or deeds.

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#39774: May 23rd 2015 at 12:25:02 PM

That is true (and it IS arbitrary), but the updated entry for El Patron, for example, still has all his deeds w/o unnecessary exposition. Hell, Red freakin' Skull has under 350.
[down]Point taken.

edited 23rd May '15 12:40:51 PM by ACW

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#39775: May 23rd 2015 at 12:37:58 PM

Actually, the issue that has prompted me to comment in Edit Requests is that a lot of the examples spend most of their time at cataloguing the deeds of the example, frequently way in excess of what is needed to establish the CM credentials.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

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