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
Tarkin ordered the destruction of an entire planet. It's hard to play "who's more heinous" when you've got that as your standard. It's not a case of Palpatine and Tarkin fighting for Eviler than Thou; it's a case of both being standouts in their own way. To be a CM, it is necessary that you stand out from the crowd of villains; it is not necessary that you be the Most Evil Thing Ever.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:34:54 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Nobody of the phoenix Five could possibly qualify. Not even Magik. They purged the world of weapons and fed the starving. That alone is a reason to fall out of the roster (along with many, many more).
Magik turned out to be a Manipulative Bitch and Namor acted like the royal Jerkass he's always been (just stronger), but thats about it.
The P5 are clearly and undeniable Anti-Villains.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianRE: Tarkin—one could argue that the whole point of the character is that he doesn't stick out the way Sidious does. Sidious is a Dark Lord of the Sith, and a sci-fi stand-in for The Antichrist, so naturally, he's a horrible black hole of morality. Conversely, Tarkin's none of those things. He's a bureaucrat. Yet in spite of that, he manages to top international crime lords like Jabba, Imperial and CIS military commanders, and every Sith Lord who isn't Sidious himself, in terms of the havoc he wreaks. Tarkin is a living monument to the evil that normal, non-powered, non-genius people can do.
Phoenix Five, let's see...
- Emma was horrified at her own actions and visibly aghast that she couldn't stop herself from doing awful things.
- Scott begged the heroes to kill him to spare the world further destruction and is currently the sympathetic protagonist of the Consequences miniseries.
- Piotr was revealed as an Unwitting Pawn for his sister, so anything bad he did is really on her.
Really, Magik and maybe Namor are the only ones you could possibly make an argument for, and even in Namor's case there's good money that the Phoenix was basically driving his body during his Moral Event Horizon crossing.
And that's my argument as to why the Phoenix Five shouldn't be listed.
Just to make sure, for others looking at this, the five characters in question are Emma Frost, Scott Summers, Piotr Rasuptin, Ilyana Rasuptin, and Namor the Sub-Mariner, correct?
Well, I can imagine that the driving force behind people putting the first two on would be their status as The Scrappy in many parts of the fandom. Piotr has been going much more morally grey of late, Ilyana gets flopped around by writers much, and Namor is always at best a Jerkass. I can see why all of them would have haters pushing for their inclusion. But between suggestions of mind control by all of them, plus the fact that all of them have had good qualities in the past, and I think all of them would have to be eliminated regardless of how they acted in the series. Plus, there's the argument of Well-Intentioned Extremist popping up for for all of them. Safer to just say no to all five.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
From the description of those characters, they fail all the tests of CM: sympathetic, not heinous, and redeemable.
So I was reading through YMMV.Dissidia Final Fantasy. Wasn't it agreed that The Emperor didn't count? It also mentions some nation. Groups don't count.
My main concern is Kefka though. I know he's certainly a Complete Monster in Final Fantasy VI, but he's a lot more sympathetic in Dissidia. He even gets an Alas, Poor Villain sendoff, revealing that he causes destruction because he sees no hope in the world. Frankly, I'm not even sure if he counts in the main game (due to being driven insane by the Magitek experiments), but I'll leave that alone.
@Krystoff: Quite bluntly, I don't believe you understand this trope. You didn't back when you went as MONEYMONEY, and I have seen no evidence to make me believe that you've improved in any way (and several bits to make me even more sure you don't). You also have a history of other forms of unhelpful behavior: pushiness, badgering people about giving their opinion on some example, and treating anything said by a mod (without mod hat on) like Holy Writ. None of this has ever quite crossed that proverbial line, but you certainly have toed it. It's incredibly aggravating to deal with, and is one of the primary reasons I've considered quitting the cleanup (that "Groke" guy was merely the last straw).
So I wouldn't be casting the first stone here if I were you.
Okay, going into the 24 hour mark to listen to any final complaints before I ax Dale the Whale
.
Also, For my english class, we read Stardust and saw the movie, I looked at the page, and I found a CM entry
- Complete Monster: The three witch sisters and Septimus: they both want to cut a young girl's heart out to obtain immortaility and in their quest they're quite happy to murder and/or torture anyone who stands in their way. Lamia, the lead witch sister, stands out in particular because she has even less of an excuse than Septimus' quest to claim the throne, and actually commits vile acts while her two sisters keep to the shadows, all in the name of eternal youth and beauty.
- Septimus and his brothers' father, the previous king of Stormhold, is also this. A total sociopath, the guy got where he is by being unrelentlessly ruthless, killed all twelve of his brothers, encourages his sons to do the same, and even laughs when one of said sons is pushed out the window to his death!
Synophsis: A star falls into a magical land, and appears as a person, the protagonist, and a bunch of villains try to attack her for various reasons.
Now the adaptations change some things, so I'll get into them.
First off, the father does not count in any adaptation. Killing his brothers is offscreen, and that's how one takes the throne, being the sole surviving heir.
Septimus in the book does not count. He murders one of his brothers from poison, and tries to murder the other (but he gets outfoxed). After his final brother, Primus, is killed, he smiles, and leaves the body to get eaten by animals, but is angry that the rules stipulate that he has to avenge his brother, he tries to kill the witch queen, but she uses an illusion on him and kills him.
Septimus in the movie does worse things. Onscreen, we get to see him kill two of his brothers, the first by pushing out a window (which may have been played for laughs, as it was so abrupt, and said brother reappears a s a ghost who's body is damaged from the fall, and argues with other ghosts of his dead brothers). Septimus first tries to poison his brothers Teritus and Primus. He fails when Primus drinks the wrong cup, and the pope dies from poisoning. It leads to a funny moment, where Septimus falls over gagging, and Primus thinks he's king, with dramatic music and all, until Septimus wakes up and says he was screwing with him (this was played for laughs, but the other 2 deaths weren't) When Septimus and Primus set out to find an amulet his father threw (and knocked down the star), Septimus kills a soothsayer who he found was working for his brother and misleading him. When they encounter a trader who cannot speak, Septimus thinks he's mocking him, and kills him. When they go after the pirates, he finds and beats the captain (a man who he finds in a dress and dancing the can-can) and threatens to kill him unless he finds the Hero and the star. In this adaptation, however, Anyone can gain immortality from the star's heart, so Septimus wants to kill her. In the climax, he teams up with the hero and attacks the other Big Bad group, the witches (all so he can get the amulet and kill her himself). When he attacks the witches servant, he finds that she is his long lost sister, I do not think it is an altruistic moment, as he only expresses surprise to see her, while his dead brothers seem happy, and Septimus earlier had said he did not care about her because he did not need to kill her to get the throne. After he dies, he's just an observer for the rest of the battle, and the scenes where his body is being used by the witches to kill the hero, are funny (especially when Septimus winces whenever the body's hit, whether or not that was played for laughs). In a bit of a freeze frame bonus, the 7 brothers pass on, 6 turn blue go to up, but Septimus turns red and goes down.
Now onto the witches.
The witches are three women who are magical and want the star. As a group they do not count.
Book: The head witch, unnamed: is the stand out example. In the book, she sets out to find the star, kill her, and take her heart, so she and her sisters can become young. She does cast a spell on a fellow witch after the star, but that's Kick The Son Of A Bitch, and not that important. She finds a man named Bernard, and turns him into a goat to pull her cart, taking the goat he was trying to sell as well. She sets up an Inn to lure in the Star and a unicorn she was with, turning Bernard and his goat into people. When Primus and The Hero, Tristran (Tristan in the movie), they rest there a while. She comes very close to killing the star, but is distracted by the other two, whom she tries to poison (It fails because Primus doesn't drink anything that he has made sure isn't poisonous, due to his brother, and the unicorn alerts Tristran to the poison). She also kills Primus after Primus discovers the Amulet on the Star, she has Bernard and Goat attack the Unicorn (against their will), getting both killed, and impales the Unicorn through the eye, removing its head later on. She tries to kill the Star again, but she cannot bring herself to do it, as she realizes that the star has fallen in love and "symbolically" given up her heart. The Star bids her goodbye, as the witch sadly returns to her sisters.
I am skeptical.
Movie Witch is a definite count. She does all those things in the book with some minor differences (killing Primus while he bathed, and murdering the Unicorn with magical fire rather than a knife, and Bernard is knocked away non-fatally, despite her efforts, though that does not matter). We also see her, called Lamia, and her sisters bring a star that fell before to their house, where they treated her nicely, to get her happy, and cut out her heart as she screamed (happy stars give more youth with their hearts). The Witch she curses in the book, she does so in the movie, and kills her later on because she was annoying, and takes her slave to be Lamia's slave. She also hex's the trader whom Septimus killed because he was annoying her. When she and her sisters finally catch the girl, they tie her up and almost kill her until Tristan and Septimus show up. Tristan and Septimus each kill one of her sisters, until Lamia kills Septimus by getting a Voodoo doll, breaking an arm and leg and drowning him, later using his corpse to fight Tristan. Finally, When Tristan faces her she defeats him in combat, and almost kills him, except she stops, sees her dead sisters, and cries, letting them go, saying that immortality is nothing now that her sisters are dead. However, as they go, she cuts them off, revealing that she lied, and is in fact proud that her sisters are dead, so she gets more years for herself. She only did that little show to make the Star reunite with Tristan, to make her happy, so she could kill her. The star later kills her with a bright shine.
Movie witch is the only example that I can definitely count, she's nastier than the book, and completely unsympathetic. The Scene where she shows no remorse for her sisters is what made her stand out, because when the first died, the second sister clearly got angry and charged forward, while Lamia stayed behind. Definitely the most powerful Big Bad, never were her murders played for humor (except maybe the annoying Witch, but that was more Crosses the Line Twice), and finally a subversion of her only altruistic moment with her sisters.
I'm Iffy on Movie!Septimus as he's also done bad things, but to different people, and for the sake of political power than Magical power, I'm inclined towards no, because some of his murderers are kinda funny, and his ghost, while not heroic, is reduced to a commentating bystander along with the rest. He does kill and torture, but maybe not as much as Lamia.
edited 7th Mar '13 9:44:16 PM by DrPsyche
@nrjxll
I don't understand this trope? Really? Than how come I cleaned so many pages? And I changed my mind on The Mad Doctor. I requested to cut him.
How would I define a Complete Monster?
1- Irredeemable. 2- Absolutely lacking any genuine compassion or sympathy or love for another sapient being. 3- Have no honor. 4- No 'good, even if twisted' cause behind their actions. 5- Go out of their way to be evil and cruel to others, in opposition to harming them only if it benefits previous plans (like personal gain).
edited 25th Oct '12 1:12:47 PM by Krystoff
Dishonored examples are up..........and they're written rather poorly.
- Lord Regent, whose entire goal is the Kill the Poor.
- Prudence, who dumps the bodies of prostitutes killed during their job in the river.
- The Pendleton twins, for their slavery mines.
- Corvo, if you make him one. Killing anyone in everyone in your path, even if they are hostile toward you.
1) and 3) dosen't give me the CM vibe because I never played this game, they both feel like Generic Doomsday Villain material to me, so needs rewrite. 3) dosen't bother to mention why Pendletons are CM, just mention "slave mines". Kill the Poor dosen't mean you're a CM, it means you're a murderous tyrant or something. 2) dosen't give any indications why, and the victims were apparently dead already. 4) seems to be the player character, and didn't we agree that evil paths don't count?
edited 25th Oct '12 1:43:53 PM by xie323
@4136 I'll admit, I didn't go to clean up the pages for the individual Final Fantasy games after cleaning up Monster.Final Fantasy. So to be fair, cuts made on the latter did not necessarily happen on the former.
For the YMMV page for Dissidia Final Fantasy, I completely agree with cutting The Emperor; beyond not being any more evil than most (well, The Emperor's naturally more evil than Golbez, but he's The Mole and some even argue the Big Good of the series) of the Chaos side, he's fairly generic at what he does (his plan is more grandiose than most, but it really amounts to the same kinds of moves the other villains try), and he's also not as bad as Shinryu. So he fails the heinous standard.
Kefka is a very iffy case. It's definitely true that they try to make Kefka pitiable, and potentially subject to Alas, Poor Villain. That said... I'm honestly not so sure that the game actually succeeds at that. Terra definitely feels sad because Kefka struggles against his own nihilism in an attempt to understand reality and find meaning. The game pretty obviously tells me I should feel sad for Kefka due to this. But honestly? There are other ways to do that than attempt to destroy all of existence to fill the hollow in your heart. Honestly, I don't buy having pity for Kefka in Dissidia.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.@4115: Great write-up of Cy.
@4122: I'd say remove them both. Kyo's father just sounds unpleasant and Ren is at the very least capable of loving one person. Plus emotional abuse isn't really enough to get someone onto this trope on it's own.
@4138: I agree with you on the Stardust examples. None of them count except for Lamia, the movie witch, since the movie embellishes her evil, while she never does anything exceptionally heinous in the book. In the book she even comes across as a Graceful Loser when she finds out she can't take the heroine's heart.
edited 25th Oct '12 2:39:37 PM by OccasionalExister
@4122
: I was surprised to see any nominations from Fruits Basket. I completely agree with you that Kyo's father does not qualify. Not complex enough or heinous enough. The case that was presented for Ren was stronger than I expected, but ultimately, I have to agree with you there as well. A Manipulative Bitch, but ultimately too complex and nuanced a character, with too many elements that contradict the trope. A monster, but not a complete one.
@4123
: Another edit war? *sigh* Still, I think you were very much on the right side, even if you got lured into unfortunate actions. The Phoenix Five would seem to violate the no-groups rule. Individual cases have to be made for individual members, and from what you say, it seems unlikely that cases can be made for all five. Also, while Word of God may not rule when it comes to this trope, a classification of CM that contradicts Word of God needs a pretty strong case to be made, IMO, to demonstrate that it's not just an Alternative Character Interpretation. I am curious, though, whether you think a case can be made for the one you singled out as an outright villain? (I'm not familiar with the work.)
I have some potential candidates for removal from Film page.
- Raynald de Chatillon from Kingdom Of Heaven leads attacks on innocent Arab villages in orgies of rape and head-chopping, just to provoke Saladin. It doesn't work until he cruelly and personally murders Saladin's sister.
- And drinking water meant for King Guy gets his throat slit.
- Offering the King water, cold water even, was a gesture meant to show that Guy was being offered parole. Guy was trying to place Raynald under Saladin's hospitality. Saladin was having none of that shit.
- And drinking water meant for King Guy gets his throat slit.
I am not sure if thats heinous enough. Values Dissonance.
- Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) from Marathon Man. A psycho Nazi dentist who loves his torture methods, as it is shown in the infamous "Is it safe?" sequence where he tortures Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) with his dental instruments, digging into one of his cavities. He also has the particular skill to kill his victims with a retractable blade, making them die slowly and painfully.
Most of his actions are Offscreen.
- Godfrey from Robin Hood 2010 is a sadistic and ruthless knight, who enjoys killing people and burning villages, betrays England in the first place and slays poor and blind Sir Walter.
I already brought him up before but I have been ignored. Now, I want to say that all the people he kill are his enemies. And Sir Walter challenged him to a duel.
- Hyperion, the King of Crete from 2011's Immortals, can be presumed to have been devout and good enough a king to inspire fanatical loyalty in his men prior to the death of his family during a plague he blames the gods for, which still doesn't mitigate nearly enough what an extremely brutal and terrifying villain he is. His unremitting nastiness comes to the spotlight in his actions: dousing a pirest refusing to reveal the location of the Epirus Bow him with oil and burning him alive; torturing the decoys of the oracle(for the same reason), using the Bronze Bull, a torture device specifically designed to put people through as much pain as possible as it roasts them alive; having nuts of a traitor defected to his side crushed with a sledgehammer; marching his army through Greece, pillaging across the land, brutally slaughtering everything in his way and raping all women he comes across to leave a legacy of children across Greece. When raiding Theseus' home village, his army destroying all resistance, they start carrying off women as slaves. When Theseus runs to his mother's aid, slaying a few soldiers, Hyperion slits Theseus mother's throat just to show what a cruel man he is. His love of others' pain also shows in his casual disregard for the lives of his own men, whom he regularly kills for various reasons, which don't necessarily have anything to do with his main goal. As for his motivation for all this, he wants to use the Epirus Bow to release the Titans specifically for the purpose of killing the gods, all of which are portrayed sympathetically. This all makes it very easy for the audience to cheer, when Theseus gives him a death with an Ironic Echo by pressing a knife into his throat, the same knife Hyperion had previously used to slit Theseus' mother's throat.
Yeah, he certainly heinous and evil, but in his backstory, he lost his family. Is this story enough to negate his CM status?
I vote no all these examples, except maybe the last one.
I also feel like Septimus, although to a lesser extent than his brothers is played for laughs to too great an extent to qualify- he and they are basically evil because narrative causality demands it.
I also kind of think that might apply to Lamia. She's certainly pretty campy. However, I do agree it is notable that in the scene where her book counterpart actually was being a Graceful Loser, film!Lamia was pulling I Surrender, Suckers! and indicated she didn't care about her sisters.
HodorOk, guys. Here's some little tidbits. From what I've seen from 32 Footsteps and Shaoken's posts on the thread and discussion page respectively, authorical intent seems to mean little in determining a CM. I responded to Shaoken's post about instances where the author may have intended the character to be sympathetic but whatever we see suggests otherwise as well as the inverse.
At this point, we must be fully aware of why Complete Monster is YMMV in the first place. Because part of it takes into account how the audience feels. I think the trope page may need a note regarding author intent to prevent people from hastily making decisions on who qualifies.
By the way, Ambar, I see that you're a little hesitant on my suggestion for the laconic page. Got any suggestions for how I can make it better?
Oh, and regarding Kefka, we're talking about a guy who once stated that he loves hearing people scream. I think this may add proof to why his Dissidia incarnation may qualify.
Re: Stardust.
It's been a long time since I've either seen the movie or read the book, but I do remember that in the former, the scene where Septimus shoves his brother out the window definitely comes across as played for laughs. He does unpleasant things, but is never played seriously enough to count.
No one in the book is a Complete Monster.
The film of Stardust has a much more humorous and whimsical tone than the book- the film is basically a Spiritual Successor of The Princess Bride.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:18:58 PM by Jordan
Hodor

@4121 I said that it was brought up multiple times. It's true. You did bring it up multiple times. As for how many that multiple is, it depends on just how kind you want to be about the fact that you tried to drag the first conversation about Rodrigo out. Rather than split hairs about it, I recommend that everyone act like reasonable, mature forum users rather than take nasty shots at each other. And, moreover, I recommend that we not drag up complaints about posts made three months ago, especially when the post in question was a reasonable worry.
@4122 Man, my Wall Of Manga (tm) is coming in handy of late. First Death Note, now Fruits Basket.
First, Kyo's father is a really jerky person, and he gets his comeuppance. That said, he's a sniveling coward whose only crimes are abusive language and emotional neglect.
Ren is a more complicated case, but I disagree that she's completely terrible. For one thing, there was genuine love between her and Akira. For another, the manga does show the amount of abuse that various members of the Sohma family inflict upon her, well before they bother showing why such abuse is heaped on. I tend to think she's actually a Jerkass Woobie.
Moreover, both really are meant to show just how damaging the Zodiac Curse is on the Sohma clan. They're mirrors of each other - there was someone that both truly cared about that was lost due to the dark impulses of the collective Sohma clan twisting the mentality of both them and their loved ones. Moreover, that twisting leads them to continue the dark impulses. The manga is essentially the "cycle of abuse" and the attempts by the youngest generation to finally escape it. I think that all of the characters are played with too much sadness and sympathy for anyone in Fruits Basket to truly be played for this trope. I'd cut all examples.
@4123 This is the place to take all potential issues for the trope, even the non-controversial ones. For your example, we don't care about Word of God - just because the author intended a particular depiction does not mean that they succeeded at making said depiction. Moreover, with the existence of the Villain Protagonist trope, becoming a protagonist of an upcoming book is no guarantee that they'll still not qualify.
In short, we want to see arguments on just why each individual member of the Phoenix Five would or would not qualify for the trope.
EDIT: @4125 I should have been more specific, since I missed that you had two parenthetical comments. The one about the dog should be removed (killing a dog doesn't compare to the rape, torture, and murder of multiple women and girls), while the one about how his brother cared for him should stay (I thought this comment wasn't parenthetical when I first read it).
edited 25th Oct '12 8:56:30 AM by 32_Footsteps
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.