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
Same
I was watching Return of the Jedi earlier and I know the movie The Clone Wars revealed he had a son, but how come Jabba the Hutt doesn't qualify?
Plus, I'd also like to pose the question: If it was only based solely on ROTJ, would the Emperor still count? I think so.
edited 17th Jan '16 8:00:45 PM by futuremoviewriter
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Okay, does Jabba really do anything heinous enough to count? He's a Fat Bastard, but nowhere near as bad as the other Monsters in the franchise.
Eh, Palpatine may be able to count even if it was just ROTJ. After all, he's still head of the Galactic Empire and responsible for much of its atrocities.
Why so serious?
Albright.
BTW, Jack Reacher is ready. I hope to finish the Tales Series early this morning and then do those 2, along with the Punisher swapping (expanded caption, expanded Slavers writeup minus that lasty sentence, Kreigkopf writeup) tomorrow.
Regarding The Revenant, while the initial limited release was Dec 25th according to
IMDb, it only went into widespread release on Jan 6th, so discussions should be held until the 20th, or two days from now.
Okay, it's time. This is the post I've been building up to for the better part of a month, making sure I'd read everything relevant and gotten all the information necessary to make this effortpost great. There are spoilers below, but as this series ended almost five years ago I won't mark them; even so, be aware they're there. Also, there are a lot of characters involved and a lot of twists and backstabs, so I hope it won't be too confusing. Alright, here we go. From the Eisner-winning comic series 100 Bullets, Mr. Augustus Medici.
The Setting
100 Bullets is set In a World… where the United States has been secretly governed since its founding by a cabal of thirteen influential families known as the Trust. The Trust began in Renaissance Europe, where a group of noble families made an alliance to covertly control the continent's monarchies from behind the scenes. When the monarchs got sick of being used, the Trust offered to leave - if the monarchs would be so kind as to give them that shiny new continent that was just discovered. The monarchs refused, and so the Trust decided to send a message. They dispatched their secret police, the seven Minutemen, to the newly-founded colony of Roanoke, where they massacred every last person there. The monarchs backed down, and the New World became the Trust's.
In the modern day, the Trust is still active, and the Minutemen consist of Cole "The Wolf" Burns, Jack "The Monster" Daw, Victor "The Rain" Ray, Wylie "The Point Man" Times, Milo "The Bastard" Garrett, Remi "The Saint" Rome, and Lono "The Dog" (who you may recall we discussed and disqualified once upon a time). The group is led by Philip "The Agent" Graves and trained by Joseph "The Warlord" Shepherd. Some years prior to the start of the story, the Trust gave the Minutemen an order: commit another massacre to take over another country. The Minutemen refused, killed family head Roland Dietrich, and were marked for death by the Trust; Graves and Shepherd placed them into cover identities to protect them. Our story's main characters are Graves, who is going about reactivating the Minutemen and recruiting new ones by giving them a test - a gun, one hundred untraceable bullets, and proof that someone in their life has done them a great wrong, to be used as the recipient pleases - and Isabelle "Dizzy" Cordova, a former Latino gang moll who passes Graves' test by killing the corrupt cops who murdered her husband and son and becomes the first new soldier in Graves' war on the Trust. The Trust's most powerful member is Augustus Medici.
Who is Augustus Medici? What has he done?
Augustus is head of House Medici, the Trust's most influential family and thus the group's de facto leader. Pretty much everything about him screams "trouble" - he has a taste for expensive suits, expensive cigars, and expensive prostitutes, keeps a pack of vicious dogs and a pool of even more vicious alligators on his property, and is accompanied at all times by his hulking bodyguard Crete. For most of the first half of the story, he is seen largely exercising his leadership role to keep the Trust from devouring itself in the face of the Minutemen's assault, and keeping tabs on them through Shepherd, who still professes loyalty. He does, however, make the rather curious decision, as the Minutemen kill the Trust's heads of house, to distribute those heads' holdings among the living members rather than allow their heirs to succeed them.
Two things prompt Augustus to take a more active role. First, Shepherd is killed in an unrelated incident, and as he dies promotes Lono to "Warlord" to succeed him. Second, there is an attempt on the life of Augustus's son and heir Benito by men hired by Javier Vasco, Augustus's nemesis on the Trust's board, a move that makes Augustus realize he should consolidate his allies. To that end, he has Lono torture Javier's collaborator Fulvio Carlito to death to cow the former into line, and also has Victor and Loop Hughes (another "New Minuteman" who passed Graves' test), who have been recruited by Lono, orchestrate a purposely failed assassination of the Trust's youngest, prettiest, and most powerful female member Megan Dietrich (daughter of the slain Roland), whom Augustus then swoops in to comfort and seduce - despite the fact that Megan is actually closer in age to Benito who has a blatant crush on her.
Getting the feeling Augustus isn't a very nice man yet?
As the war continues, various Trust members and Minutemen die and various sub-factions spring up within both groups, with Dizzy, Cole, Lono and others all finding themselves leaders at one point or another. It also becomes clear toward the end that there are actually two sides within the Trust: an older faction led by Augustus and Javier, whose antagonism toward Augustus was actually faked the whole time, and a younger faction led by Megan. Graves is, in fact, working with the older faction to concentrate all the Trust's power in Augustus and Javier, and it's here the true extent of Augustus's genius becomes apparent - he proposed that the Trust take over another country knowing the Minutemen would refuse, which would in turn lead to the Trust demanding the Minutemen be killed, which would lead to the Minutemen desiring revenge, and, under the guidance of a "sympathetic" Graves, killing off all the Trust members Augustus wanted dead! When the remaining Minutemen figure this out, all but Lono ally with each other and go rogue.
The game's final moves open with only Cole, Jack, Victor, Dizzy, and Loop of the Minutemen, Augustus, Javier, and Graves of the Old Trust, and Megan, Benito, Joan D'Arcy and Tibo Vermeer of the Young Trust still alive, as well as an increasingly unhinged Lono running around independently. It's D'Arcy who begins to shake the house of cards first, bringing an ex-Minuteman, the aptly-named Mr. Slaughter, out of retirement to take out two key assets of Augustus's power base: first, a man named Abe Rothstein, who turns out to be Graves' government contact and the source of his untraceable bullets, and second Javier himself. With two of his main assets gone, Augustus sits down with the Young Trust and admits he's been beaten - but he wouldn't be Augustus if he didn't have a few aces up his sleeve. First, he turns the House of Vasco over to Graves, who in turn selects Dizzy to be the new Agent of the Minutemen. And second, in a major upset, Augustus resigns as head of House Medici in favor of Benito.
The next morning, Benito is found murdered in his pool. The House of Medici, and thus the Trust itself, has been decapitated... and everything goes ballistic. Dizzy guns down Lono. Jack and Crete kill each other. Cole liquidates Vermeer, D'Arcy, and finally Megan before allowing himself to perish in an explosion. Loop, Victor, and Slaughter hotwire a car and never look back. And Graves confronts Augustus and fills in all the remaining holes: Augustus, as it turns out, never wanted to share the Trust with anyone - he wanted it all for himself. He gave up his seat in favor of Benito so the other members would see Benito as a threat to their own power and kill him. They, in turn, would then have to be killed by the Minutemen. That big mess of deaths up there? Exactly according to keikaku. Augustus offered Graves his own Trust House as a bribe, feeling he could control Graves and thus whatever new Minutemen he selected. Augustus doesn't deny wanting his son dead, but takes no responsibility for it - the other three houses did it for him, and they had a "choice" not to, a mocking echo of something Graves frequently says to recipients of his tests. That's about enough for Graves, who silences Augustus with a round straight through his black heart. And as the last link in this macabre chain, Graves takes Dizzy, her back broken in the same explosion that killed Cole, onto his lap and allows her to execute him, ending the Vicious Cycle of the Trust forever.
Heinous Standard?
High. 100 Bullets is set in the seediest underbellies of American society - street gangs, strip clubs, maximum security prisons - and its cast is populated by both the denizens of those underbellies and those at the top who made them that way. Neither the highest nor the lowest of society come off smelling like roses, and that's before you get into nut jobs like Lono who do whatever they want no matter how many bodies they leave behind. However, I think Augustus passes. He has by far that most resources of the cast and for 99% of the story, 99% of the cast is his Unwitting Pawn. All the deaths in the final issue? Augustus. All the murders of the other Trust members and Minutemen throughout the story? Augustus. All the civilians caught in the crossfire? All Augustus, baby; apart from the part where he himself dies, that bloodstained final issue is exactly what Augustus wanted.
Mitigating Factors?
There's a couple of things that need to be discussed here. The first, as you may have guessed, is Augustus's son Benito. Earlier on, Augustus does seem to care for Benito: he panics when Benito is almost assassinated, jovially plays tennis with him, and cries when he sees Lono is trying to corrupt him. However, all of that goes out the window at the very end. It's hard to describe to someone who hasn't seen it, but when Augustus admits he was behind Benito's death he's chillingly calm; there's not one iota of the previous apparent care for him left. Even Megan, the one most likely to have directly killed Benito as she was seen seducing him in the pool where he was found dead, is more affected by his death, and it's implied she reciprocated his feelings for her on some level. And oh yeah, if you look closely at the panel where Megan seduces Benito? You can see Augustus's silhouette in the window of his house, just puffing on one of his trademark cigars while watching his flesh and blood die.
The other possible mitigating factor is that while Augustus intended everyone else to die, he seemingly intended to spare Graves and give him a seat on the Trust. However, as I said Graves works out that this is a bribe in an attempt to control the Minutemen, so I don't find this redeeming at all.
Conclusion
As the one responsible for everything in the story, and due to shedding what redeeming traits he had in the face of losing his power, I think Augustus qualifies. I can totally see arguments in the other direction, though, so I'm eager to see what you all think.
Sorry if that was tl;dr, by the way.
edited 18th Jan '16 8:43:39 AM by HamburgerTime
I...feel like Augustus was discussed a WHILE back. Yeah, he was
. So final verdict is he counts? I'll give a tentative
. Is Lono still a cut?
That thing with Graved does indeed seem like a bribery. Good lord, is Augustus Crazy-Prepared or what?
edited 18th Jan '16 8:25:52 AM by ACW
All the Second Death Star's destruction of those fleet ships as well as everything on the moon of Endor in ROTJ was at Palpatine's whim and order. Plus, he did intend to sacrifice Vader just so he could trade him in for a newer model. Plus, there's a deleted scene where he orders the moon destroyed if the shield is successfully deactivated and is willing to destroy all the troopers and Imperial officers there just to do it, so we didn't really need ROTS (Revenge of the Sith) to show just how heinous he could truly be as we already got the idea that he was rotten to the core. That being said, I'm glad we got his role in ROTS as he was by far the best part of the whole movie.
Yes, Lono's a cut. He had a Villainous Friendship with Milo Garrett and seriously respected Shepherd.
