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
I'm fine with cutting Dale from Monk based on the last two posts... I just was a bit confused by the wording in the original post.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.@4095 The Valeyard is not so much a Split Personality, as an Enemy Within. He's basically the part of the Doctor that in the canon series split off to become the Valeyard the Fifth (I think) Doctor confronted and the part that was implied to be the Dream Lord in the Eleventh Doctor's time. The difference here is instead of being split off, Discord allowed the Valeyard to take control of the Doctor by forcing him to regenerate into him instead of becoming an Enemy Without.
He's portrayed as, simply put, a pure evil version of the Doctor. He manages to completely No-Sell the Memory Spell, which in universe managed to restore Rarity and Rainbow Dash from their corrupted selves. Not only does this prove the Valeyard is Not Brainwashed, something he takes pleasure in bragging about to Twilight, he laughs at the Doctor's fondest memories he's shown by, which are said to remind the target of who they really are, in this case, they're memories that would've brought the Doctor to his senses, the Valeyard is completely unfazed, and even laughs at them. He also shows no compassion and is actually the CRUELEST to Derpy, the Doctor's former companion. His actions imply this is intentional because he seems to take pleasure in harming the people the Doctor loved the most (at one point he relishes the idea of seeing the Doctor's granddaughter Susan suffer a nervous breakdown).
To top this off, after the Valeyard is killed and his template destroyed to prevent him from just regenerating back into the Valeyard and allowing the Doctor to take back control, Discord speculates that, while the base Time Lord regenerated back into the Doctor, the Valeyard himself may have gone to Hell (Discord would know that, his Father is literally Pony Hell), and the group as a whole doesn't refer to the Valeyard as 'the Doctor' but instead as either his name or 'the monster inside' the Doctor.
The story presents the Valeyard as a separate consciousness from the Doctor and his own individual as opposed to a Split Personality. And no attempt is made to give him any semblance of redeeming qualities.
Does that help explain things?
edited 24th Oct '12 2:47:24 PM by Godzillawolf
Nope.
While Lorenzo's deeds are mentioned by Lucrezia, Caterina's are mentioned in the database entries by Shawn. The same entries you base half your argument off. Here, I actually got a link to Rodrigo for you:
So a few things there: Shawn says that Lucrezia and Rodrigo's relationship is only rumoured to be there, and the image itself is of course fake within the confines of the story (AKA Shawn create it to show things that Ezio would have never seen himself). I mean the fact that the visual of him standing in that field of corpses which you love so much you threw it into his write-up has a Templar Sigil magically hovering right behind him and the corpses of Ezio's family still hanging from the gallows should have really tipped you off this wasn't a literal scene. Rodrigo didn't literally stand in fields of corpses of people he had killed (because he had people killed, his body count of people he personally killed would be low), so the fact you feel the need to use that visual which is clearly symbolic instead of literal as a mark against him. And along those lines the visual with his daughter can't be used against him because even within the confines of the game it's a fake representation of something Shawn even admits is just a rumour.
Your example is also misleading; Ezio was angry at Rodrigo up until the end of II where he refuses to kill him, stating that it wouldn't change what had happened and spared his life. The next time the two meet a year or two later Rodrigo is dead and Ezio respectfully gives him the last rights he gives to all his victims, even though since Ceasere had killed him there was no obligation for him to do that.
So at the moment it's 2-2 on him. Although seeing as this is the third time you brought him up Krystoff we should also go back to the other votes in the past and use them as well.
EDIT: And looking at past posts
on the issue (all the way back on 46/47) Fighteer even stated that you can't use the rumours between him and his daughter because it was Offscreen Villiany.
edited 24th Oct '12 5:13:09 PM by Shaoken
@4105 Ah, so it wasn't just me, Rodrigo has been brought up multiple times by the same person.
In short, that's Single-Issue Wonk in action.
Do I need to holler for a mod, or can we close the book on Rodrigo Borgia from Assassins Creed once and for all?
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.While I think 32 Footsteps put it pretty well, a few more thoughts about Light.
One other issue that I thought of is that honestly, the work doesn't really seem to care all that much about all of the people he kills (except for major characters). I actually think it probably qualifies as Offstage Villainy- there's the odd montage of a bunch of people clutching at their hearts, but most of the people killed (which yes, is probably in the ten thousands) isn't shown on screen, and there's no attempt to humanize any of his (non-main character) victims.
Also, in addition to his genuine (although clearly somewhat put on) affection for his family, he is sort of genuinely friendly toward the shinigami Ryuk- although yes, this indicates that Light [[{{understatement isn't a great guy}}]], since Ryuk finds his mass-murdering (and pretensions of godhood) hilarious.
And the fact that Light is a nice guy when he doesn't have the Death Note. If he was a Complete Monster, you would think that this would be a facade, but it isn't. Deprived of the Death Note, Light is a pretty good guy (albeit with presumably some repressed dark urges that he embraces whenever he does have the Note).
edited 24th Oct '12 5:28:37 PM by Jordan
HodorHuh, always thought you were a mod. Re Rodrigo, not sure if it means anything, but Rodrigo's actions in the game more or less sound like the actions of the actual guy (including perhaps the Parental Incest- or at least he was accused of that by his enemies during his life). The historical Rodrigo's generally cited "good quality" was that Jews were treated fairly well in Rome while he was pope- which is impressive since he was Spanish and lived at the time of the Inquisition. Does the game happen to refer to that?
Well I don't consider those offscreen- but it's like I think we see in the show maybe 20 of the presumably thousands of people he killed.
edited 24th Oct '12 5:32:38 PM by Jordan
HodorFor the record, I'm also against Light's inclusion. From everything I've heard about the work, he sounds like a truly revolting character, but no matter how "extreme" he gets or how positive the reader actually considers his intentions, he's still a Well-Intentioned Extremist - or at least starts as one - and does not qualify.
4110: I'm pretty sure Fighteer is a Mod.
4107: Not having the death note removed his memories of having it. I believe that his motivation, corruption under holding all that power, and the progression he made Jumping Off Of The Slippery Slope, were forgotten and he was back to the well intentioned person (albeit darker as you say).
I still believe that it was power that corrupted Light in the fundamental sense, not the this is evil and it makes the user evil.
Regarding Offstage Villainy (I am not getting to the Well intentioned Extremist argument in this paragraph): We do get the death montage, and several criminal deaths. FBI agent Ray Pember dies in front of us, Pember's girlfriend symbolically walks up a golden staircase (to a noose, not heaven), when light has her killed without the body being found. The American task force almost all die onscreen through Kira's action, and most of the Mob guys die onscreen as well. L dies onscreen, but through a complicated Gambit to Kill Rem, which was orchestrated by Light, but not done directly by him. Also, he had Takami burn herself to death because he considered her a liability.
edited 24th Oct '12 5:43:38 PM by DrPsyche
Yes, I don't dispute that a fair amount of deaths are shown (20 was a guess), it's still a fraction of them, and there's never any attempt to humanize victims who aren't major characters.
Actually, I didn't mean that Light was a version of his good self when he didn't have the Death Note, although this might be true- I mean that during this time and at the very beginning of the first episode, Light is seemingly a genuinely good guy, but he obviously has some dark impulses that allowed him to get so readily corrupted by power.
HodorI wasn't trying to say that Light became different, I mean that he developed and walked down this dark path, learning more and gaining power. Removing the death Note puts him back at the top of the slope, without having killed and going through It Gets Easier. He hasn't been exposed to a solution to the world's problems (in this case the death note), and hasn't fanatically embraced it (or fanatically embraced an easy solution with him on top, but hey, that's just semantics on my part).
I thought Pember, Mello, Takami, and Naomi were humanized, among others, but yes, like you say, that's only a fraction (A Million Is a Statistic, that's what I kept thinking as I watched Death Note).
EDIT: Lost track of the hours, but I cut Amber's Dad Blaine and cited the forum. Thanks for your contributions everyone.
edited 24th Oct '12 8:32:40 PM by DrPsyche
The Criminal Minds clean up continues. As noted before, I'm behind all the cuts Largo listed. I'm also wondering if perhaps we should cut Randy Slade, given that he only appears in flashbacks, recieves no characterisation, and is not the actual villain of the episode.
I've also done this little write-up for Benjamin "Cy" Bradstone, compressing his entry into a single bullet point (though I'm keeping the quote as it sums him up far too well). Here are both the original and my rewrite.
Original:
- Just two episodes into the season, "Proof" gives us the truly unique Cy Bradstone, an utterly horrifying Serial Killer who tortures and kills women who remind him of a girl he tried to rape as a teen and who later went on to marry his brother in ways that destroy their senses, at one point pouring sulfuric acid down a girl's throat. The reason he's truly unique is that he's mentally disabled, having been deprived of oxygen in the womb, and unlike the similar Un Sub in "The Uncanny Valley", this isn't played for sympathy at all; on the contrary, it's mentioned that although he's disabled, he's smart enough to know that his disability means people will be more likely to trust him and uses that as a lure to snatch more victims.
- He tries to rape his own niece because she reminded him of his first victim. He's also a raging sadist who injures women out of misogyny and is absolutely gleeful when he tells his brother what he's done. He's not a handicapped man taking out his anger on the world. He's a sadistic psychopath who happens to be handicapped.
Rewrite:
- "Proof" gives us Benjamin "Cy" Bradstone, whose mental disability makes him unique, but not even slightly sympathetic. Pretending to be far more handicapped than he is, Cy lures women out of the public eye, forces them into his shed, rapes them, uses sulfuric acid to burn away their senses, and then stabs them to death. If they don't like the way he looks, he takes their eyes. If they spit when he kisses them, he takes their sense of taste. If they don't like his smell, he burns out their nostrils. His video journal reveals that he has been like this since he was a young boy (at one point he gloats about how much he enjoyed beating his dog Poppy), and it's eventually revealed that he is targeting women who remind him of his sister-in-law, whom he attempted to molest when they were both teenagers. When his niece puts on a cheerleader costume that reminds him of her mother she becomes Cy's final victim. After his arrest, his brother Matt (who has always been supportive of Cy, going so far as to offer to let him move in with him) demands to know why Cy did this; Cy laughs in his face, and tells him that he has always hated Matt and was planning to deafen and then kill him one day. A ragingly misogynistic psychopath who just happens to be handicapped, Cy is fully aware of how awful his actions are, as evidenced by this message he leaves for Matt:
I think my rewrite's an improvement, but then again, I would think that, wouldn't I? What does the forum say?
edited 26th Oct '12 4:32:18 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
What do you Guys think about adding General Grievous? I know that he can't qualify if we'd just judge his appearance in Episode III, because he didn't really do anything, but if we count the Expanded Universe (or even just Clone Wars and The Clone Wars) he clearly does qualify, imO. Only redeeming feature about him is his tragic backstory, but many Cm have that. He has murdered countless (partially defensles) Jedi, and Innocents, he backstabs people who have outlived their usefulness and he casually kills his own troops if they just dare to say one wrong word in front of him. He never shows any kind of regret, just sadistic glee and blood-thirst.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian@4110 If you meant me, I promise, I'm not a mod here. I've just been doing this cleanup for over a year, and I have a very good feel for the trope. I try to do my best to be respectful of others and to give as many nominations consideration as possible. I also try not to bully people, even when I find their actions objectionable - thus why I publicly warned about calling a mod for questions of Single-Issue Wonk rather than just call a mod outright - I'm giving a warning that I find the behavior objectionable rather than immediately going for intervention on the hopes that the issue will solve itself without said intervention.
I get along with several mods due to my work in Special Efforts, though, and I've gotten plenty of nice comments from them for various work I've done.
@4115 To be fair, flashbacks are considered valid for purposes of showing whether Complete Monster is applicable, so a character that appears only in flashbacks still appears (plus, this gets us to avoid headaches involved with tropes like Anachronic Order - if it's shown, it's valid for consideration). So I think more detail on just what is shown about the character is needed, since he was one of the ones we had little on when the show was first brought up.
For the writeup on Cy, cut the parenthetical comment (it's extraneous), but the rest looks fine.
@4116 Grievous isn't nearly as bad as Emperor Palpatine (or even Grand Moff Tarkin). He fails the "heinous" test.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.@ 4106
I didn't brought him three time; TWO times. Occasional Exister brought him up the third time. I might close a book on Rodrigo, and I was about to do that until Occasional Exister nailed my reasons for his inclusion in post 3948. So, lets close a book on Rodrigo but if anybody brings him up again, don't expect me not to participate. I will close a book for now, but if anyone will want to argue for his inclusion again I am going to participate.
And to you nrjxll, please stop antagonizing me. Thats not the first time. You already did in post 1901.
edited 25th Oct '12 7:18:32 AM by Krystoff
Stumbled across what I think are two bad examples from Fruits Basket.
The first is Kyo's father. Here's the entry from the YMMV.Fruits Basket page (there's no entry on the CM page; spoiler tag removed):
- Kyo's father to a lesser extent if you think about it. After Kyo's mom committed suicide, it was believed that it was Kyo's fault. However, it is later implied that she loved him and that Kyo's father may have been the cause. He took no responsibility and blamed Kyo for it.
The problem is that this is all we know about Kyo's father; he's a flat character who barely enters the story.
The second is Ren, Akito's mother. While she's indubitably a bitch and the worst character in the universe, played seriously and without remorse, I don't think she hits the global heinous standard. Psychological abuse is bad, but I don't think it's sufficient on its own for CM. Here's the entry from the Monster.Anime And Manga page (spoiler tags removed):
- Ren Sohma from Fruits Basket. Her start isn't that bad as she reaches for her Ill Boy future husband Akira and bonds with him, but things quickly go to Hell when she gets pregnant, is told that her baby is likely to be a girl, and fears that she'll "steal" Akira's attention. Her solution is throwing a tantrum in which she threatens to escape and get herself an abortion if her future girl isn't raised as a male, under the excuse of how a female leader would make the Sohma clan look bad. After Akira dies and leaves their daughter Akito without anyone to defend her, Ren constantly abuses and belittles her kid, telling her for several years straight that no one will love her, everyone will abandon her, and that she's only worthy of anything because she's the "God" of the Zodiac, and then, no one truly respects her. This causes Akito to grow into a terrifying mix of Yandere, Broken Bird, and Manipulative Bitch that would commit many terrible deeds towards the cursed Sohmas and the non-cursed ones, since she lives in absolute terror of being left alone and have outer people take the Sohmas away from her. And later in the story, not only does she have sex with Akito's sort-of boyfriend Shigure to spit even more on Akito's face, but she forces Akito to accept an outsider like Tohru as Shigure and Yuki's housekeeper as a bet, fully knowing that this would end up triggering Akito's rage and complexes at some point. Later, she manipulates her desperate niece Rin into getting Akira's last keepsake while promising to help her break the curse, and when that fails, and Rin is imprisoned and slowly tortured to almost death by Akito. She tries to kill Akito herself. Really, Akito is shown as a horrible person, but Ren is definitely to blame for lots of her bullshit, and it was for such a selfish reason too. Akito does get better and has a Heel–Face Turn...thanks to Tohru, the girl who becomes a Spanner in Ren's cruel gambits. Immediately after Akira died and she learns that Akito was named the new head of the family, Ren immediately throws a fit and screams how "that thing" is just a "toy" and "Akira just used it to pass the time!" Also, she said this while little Akito was right there, recovering from watching her father die. Upon finding out what happened to Rin, Ren coolly tells her maid that she really was lying about knowing how to break the curse and says about Rin "worthless children really are just worthless".
edited 25th Oct '12 6:45:37 AM by Nocturna
Someone keeps adding the Phoenix Five from Avengers Vs X-Men to the CM entry on X-Men, even though they're barely even villains (apart from Illyana), Word of God says they were supposed to be sympathetic, and at least two of them have been confirmed for protagonist roles in upcoming books. I got into a revert war with the guy, which I've been asked to back down from and take the discussion here, so, here it is. Apologies for any inconvenience on my part.
edited 25th Oct '12 8:07:32 AM by HamburgerTime
I would agree that Grievous doesn't count as a CM, especially since the reason that he was so sadistic in the first place was because they made him so after his shuttle "accident".
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.
This. It's strongly suggested in some works—and stated flat out in others—that the computers slaved to Greivous' brain are suppressing his empathy, and causing him to believe that he's always been the bastard that he is now. He lacks agency, and doesn't measure up to Sidious or even Grand Moff Tarkin when it comes to scale (yeah, he's said to have slaughtered whole worlds, but we never see it).
@4120
I included the bit in parentheses to show that Cy has absolutely no reason to hate his brother. Given the level of abuse and/or rejection a lot of criminal minds villains suffer from their family members, I thought it important to note that Matt doesn't do anything of the sort to Cy. When a man supports you your entire life and offers you a place to stay, and your response is to try and burn his daughter's hands off while fantasising about raping his wife, you've hit a pretty severe level of vile.
As for Randy, here's what we know about him—he was a high-scoring student who decided, out of the blue, to shoot up his school cafeteria while claiming to be God. At the end of his rampage he set off a bomb. I don't recall much more being shown than that.

edited 24th Oct '12 2:13:01 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar