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
If it gets the point of the trope across, it can work, protagonists or not. Trying to kill the heroes? Yes, that's generic, and that's what every hero does. Pictures like that don't work. Slowly and horrifically torturing the protagonists when you've overpowered them with a sick smile on your face? That's Monster material and images like that will illustrate the concept of a CM. I have no idea why some people on this thread automatically say "naw" to a photo if the person being gruesomely tortured in question is a protagonist. Merely attempting to kill the protagonists is one thing, even if said protagonist is a child, but drawing out their suffering for no other reason than to amuse yourself is way past the boundary of "generic."
edited 7th Feb '16 11:21:59 PM by Scraggle
Gohan's a protagonist, but I feel that the image of him being tortured by second form Frieza would still work out. Besides, on the Complete Monster images, we have images of Ragyo and Frieza torturing the main protagonist, and deuteragonist respectively.
edited 8th Feb '16 6:22:21 AM by Awesomekid42
Has anyone ever brought up Shep Lambrick from the movie Would You Rather? He's a rich guy who offers people with money troubles large sums of money for winning his "games." These games consist of taking advantage of their situations by bribing them to hurt themselves and/or each other for his amusement. It starts off small, with him bribing a vegetarian girl to eat meat and giving a recovering alcoholic $50,000 to down a bottle of scotch. It escalates from there, and he has them do stuff like stabbing one another with an ice pick or getting a man to slice his own eyeball open. Technically, the only thing he directly does is shoot a man who was going to attack him with a beating stick (after he had the man use it to beat another player to death), though he's still indirectly responsible for everything that happens because he's a sadist who takes advantage of other peoples' money problems for his entertainment.
His son Julian might count too. He's present at the game, though he doesn't participate. He's just there to enjoy it like his father and make snarky comments towards the contestants. It's pretty clear that he takes just as much, if not more, sadistic pleasure in making people suffer as his father does. When one contestant loses his temper and starts threatening Julian, he gets his father to give the contestants a Sadistic Choice of either stabbing another contestant and risk killing them by puncturing a major artery, or beating the man who yelled at Julian with a stick. This eventually results in the man being beaten to death. Julian also attempts to rape one of the female contestants after she "breaks the rules" and tries to escape, and earlier dialogue between him and Shep suggests that this isn't the first time it's happened.
edited 8th Feb '16 9:23:03 AM by Pwnisher248
- Android Arc: Cell, an Ultimate Lifeform created by Dr. Gero, inherited Frieza's sociopathic sadism and Vegeta's pride. He goes around towns eating thousands of people with his tail just to increase his powers, the last of the victims having his ordeal disturbingly prolonged in order to give him absolute fear of being absorbed. Cell then absorbs Androids 17 and 18, resulting in Cell going One-Winged Angel. Though Cell was programmed to kill, several Androids proved that Gero's creations can have moral agency; in addition, Cell takes a sadistic pleasure in killing, as shown when he starts "the Cell Games," just to hold off destroying Earth so that he can see everyone's faces contort in terror and states that he would've hunted every single person on Earth one by one if he won, after which he would then destroy Earth and then go on to other planets. Cell beats Gohan to near death and creates "Cell Juniors" to torture the other Z Fighters so that he can transform to his Superpowered Evil Side, which he succeeds by destroying Android 16 in front of him. When the fight stopped going his way, he tried to destroy the world with his self-destruct sequence, forcing Goku to perform a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Majin Buu Arc:
- Babidi, the doppleganger clone of Bibidi, who uses the evil in a person's heart to make them want to serve him, orchestrated the revival of Majin Buu, ultimately making him the one responsible for the cataclysmic amounts of death and destruction that occur later. Babidi kills his men when they are no longer useful, including brainwashed minions Spopovich and Yamu, after which he comments how enjoyable their deaths were; and throws Dabura, his loyal right-hand man, under the bus once Buu is revived. He took great delight in having Buu systematically kill the people of Earth so he could lure out Piccolo, Goten, and Trunks all for the purpose of getting his petty revenge against them. When he's asked to stop this by Goku, he then announces that he'll have more people killed just to spite him. Finally, he crushed the head of someone who gave him the names of Piccolo, Goten, and Trunks, just because he found the information to be useless. He also constantly threatens Majin Buu when the latter doesn't obey him.
- Super Buu, the later form of Evil Buu, has the evil of Kid Buu but, unlike Fat Buu, who is too childish to know better, has the ability to understand about his own evil, he just doesn't care. Once made eloquently intelligent by Piccolo, he actually lamented killing off all of humanity earlier because destroying their cities wasn't as fun without them screaming. When told by Piccolo to go kill off some humans to buy some time for Goten and Trunks to master the fusion technique, his response, out of impatience, is to fire a barrage of energy that locks on and kills every human outside of Kami Tower except Hercule; this is conveniently called Human Extinction Attack, because it fired as many blasts needed to bring the human race to extinction . He also turns Chichi into an egg to smash it because she was annoying him. Once he's fed up, he turns Krillin and everyone except Gotenks and Piccolo into candy and eats them alive. Finally, once he does have Piccolo's intelligence, despite being superior to a Gohan who had trounced him earlier, he beats him senseless while using Piccolo's teachings to mess with his head.
edited 9th Feb '16 4:46:33 PM by ACW
Effortposts for Shep and Julian Lambrick from Would You Rather:
Effortpost for Shep Lambrick:
Who is he? What has he done?
Shep Lambrick is the wealthy chairman of the Lambrick Foundation. He meets the protagonist, Iris, and invites her to a dinner party where she will receive the chance to obtain enough money to turn her situation around. Iris is in a bad state, financially, and her brother Raleigh needs an expensive medical procedure for leukemia which they can't afford. Iris accepts Lambrick's offer.
Upon attending the dinner party, she meets several other people who are also there to get an opportunity to get out of debt. Lambrick shows up and explains that they will be playing a game, and that the winner will get a large sum of money and have all their debts paid off. The game is "would you rather?" where players are given two unattractive choices and have to decide which they'd rather do.
The choices are fairly simple at first. Iris, a vegetarian, is paid $10,000 to eat meat and another character who is a recovered alcoholic downs a bottle of scotch for $50,000. They get progressively worse as the games go on, though. One man attempts to leave, but Lambrick tells him that participation is required by that point, and when the guy still attempts to leave, Lambrick has his butler shoot him dead. The players are hooked up to an electric-shock machine two at a time and one is given the choice to shock either him or herself or the other person hooked up to the machine.
After Travis, one of the contestants, becomes irate and yells at his son Julian (who will get an effortpost of his own after this), Lambrick structures the other contestant's choices around Travis. He gives them all the choice of either stabbing the person next to them in the thigh with an ice pick (which has the risk of killing them by puncturing a major artery) or repeatedly striking Travis with a beating stick. As none of the other contestants wish to potentially commit murder, most of them regretfully opt to beat Travis. By the end of this part of the movie, Travis' back is covered in blood and he's most likely not going to make it. So, Lambrick has another contestant finish him off by beating him to death. It's not really a Mercy Kill, though. Travis was just no longer capable of participating in the game. As the contestants pull a surprise attack to try and escape, the man who just beat Travis to death goes after Lambrick with the stick, but Lambrick pulls out a gun and shoots him dead.
The things Lambrick has the contestants do just get worse from here. Iris is almost drowned, and another contestant is drowned, Iris narrowly avoids having all of her teeth extracted, another man is made to slice his eyeball open, and Iris is finally given the choice of walking away emptyhanded or shooting the last remaining other contestant to death. Iris regretfully kills the other man.
None of this is done for any reason beyond the fact that Lambrick is a sadist who enjoys taking advantage of the less fortunate by making them do depraved acts for his own amusement.
Are his actions heinous by the standards of the story?
He's the movie's main villain, so I'd say so.
Any Freudian Excuse or redeeming qualities?
The closest he gets to a redeeming quality is that he actually does make good on his promise to Iris to get her brother the operation he needs after she wins the game ( though, it doesn't really matter anyway because her brother kills himself to avoid burdening his sister anymore). I'm not really sure if that would disqualify him or not. Personally, though, I don't believe it does. It's pretty clear that Lambrick knows full well the level of psychological trauma he's inflicted on Iris and doesn't care. It's apparent throughout the movie that he just views others as playthings for his amusement. Even if Iris' brother hadn't committed suicide, Iris would have to live with the trauma caused by Lambrick, probably for the rest of her life, and I think that's something Lambrick was fully aware of.
While he's upset that Julian attempts to rape Iris, it's not because he tried to rape her. The reason he's upset is because he doesn't want his game to be disrupted.
Final verdict?
The fact that he makes good on his promise may disqualify him, but I'm leaning towards a "keep."
Next up is his son Julian:
Who is he? What has he done?
Julian Lambrick is the son of the aforementioned Shep Lambrick. He's present at the dinner party, though he does not actually take part in the competition. He's just there because he enjoys watching people suffer. Much of his dialogue consists of snarky comments directed at the contestants, and it's pretty clear that, like his father, he views the less-fortunate as beneath him. Playthings for him to control and amuse himself with. His body language suggests that he may even get more sadistic pleasure from the contest than his father. Unlike his father who is Faux Affably Evil, Julian is just a straight-up Jerkass and it's obvious from the minute he shows up that we aren't supposed to like him.
After the first round is over, Julian decides to talk to the contestants. He speaks to them in an extremely condescending manner, and repeatedly refers to them as "pigs." As outlined in Shep's effortpost above, one of the contestants, named Travis, becomes irate and calls Julian a "psycho little bitch." Julian smugly tells him that opening his mouth was a bad idea, and then leaves the room. As mentioned before, when the games resume, the contestants are all forced to either potentially kill the person sitting next to them or beat Travis with a large stick. Not wanting to potentially kill someone, most of them opt to beat Travis (though none enjoy it). This ends when Travis is eventually beaten to death, and it's all but outright stated that Julian got his father to have them do this as a form of Disproportionate Retribution for Travis' outburst.
When the contestants pull a surprise attack on the staff, Iris escapes the room. Julian goes off to help look for her. When he finds her, he attempts to rape her as punishment for "breaking the rules." She stabs his leg in self-defense and he's made to sit out the rest of the games in his room, not being seen again. Earlier dialogue implies that this isn't the first time something like this has happened.
Are his actions heinous by the standards of the story?
It's difficult to say. The mastermind is clearly his father Shep, while Julian is just there as a spectator. That being said, he does cause Travis to be brutally tortured and beaten to death just because Travis had an outburst at him. There's also his attempted rape of Iris, something that even his father isn't pleased about (though, only because it would disrupt the game). Like I said before, dialogue during his introduction scene suggests that he's raped contestants in the past, or possibly killed them. Overall, he doesn't really do as much as his father, but I think what he does do, as well as the overall smugness with which he does it gives him potential as a CM
Any Freudian Excuse or redeeming qualities?
Shep mentions after he tries to rape Iris that Julian lacks restraint because his mother died. But one look at how Julian conducts himself proves that this is a load of bull. He reacts with absolute glee over the contestants' suffering, and it's incredibly obvious that he's just a sadistic Smug Snake.
Final verdict?
I think he could count, though heinousness might be an issue. I haven't really decided on a verdict. I'll let others give their opinions.
edited 8th Feb '16 12:04:38 PM by Pwnisher248
Hmm. Shep seems on the fence for me. He does meet the standards, but him actually giving the money to Iris is something. Although, with someone like Shep, perhaps he knew that leaving her alive and traumatized is much worse than simply killing her.
I'll give a
.
Julian's a
. He's an asshole who killed one guy and tried to rape one person, with everything else implied. Sure, evil, but not that evil compared to Shep.
edited 8th Feb '16 1:31:00 PM by Tyk5919
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.


edited 7th Feb '16 7:46:12 PM by Overlord