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
Damien seems to have enough up votes (and last I looked, no down votes) to merit a write up, so I'll try to get one up tonight.
I'll also try to get an effort post on Emperor Nick the Puissant form General Protection Fault up by Saturday. Unlike Damien, a lot has happen to Emperor Nick the Puissant since he was put on the CM page, but my quick impression is that he's still worth an effort post.
Ah, the things I read on this thread.
Anywho, time for a new proposal.
What's the work?
The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison is the story of a girl named....well, it varies throughout the book, but we'll call her "Inara", as that's the name used for her most of the book.
Now, at the start of the book, Inara is being questioned by detectives about her, and many other girls', recent escape from a place called "The Garden".
The Garden is run by a Serial Kidnapper named "the Gardener", a man who kidnaps girls around 17 years old and keeps them in a huge and beautiful sanctuary where he tattoos intricate butterfly wing designs on them, along with sleeping with them regularly. After they turn twenty-one, the Gardener puts them to sleep (PERMANENTLY), then encases them in a thick resin-like substance, forever keeping them and their beautiful "wings" on display.
Now, the Gardener himself doesn't qualify. He's Affably Evil, has lpoved ones, and thinks he's legitimately helping the girls (Creep). His oldest son on the other hand....
Who is he?
Avery is the Gardener's eldest son.
He is the one who assists his father in grabbing the girls, and, just like his father, regularly forces them to sleep with him. Unlike his father, however, Avery takes things a bit further....
What has he done?
First off, he's a serial rapist. However, whereas his father is as gentle and loving during the....act as he can be, Avery brutalizes, tortures, and viciously rapes the girls he gets his hands on, taking pleasure from their pain and fear of him. He also helps his father kill them, though he obviously would prefer a more painful death for them.
Avery first approaches Inara after kidnapping her and drags her to his own special torture chamber, where a girl he has just finished torturing/raping has just died, much to his delight.
He rapes and beats Inara, and stomps off after she refuses to show fear or pain.
Now, Avery is allowed to sleep with Inara after this, but his father is very specific that he cannot overly hurt her, and while Avery follows this rule at first, he quickly becomes bored of it and, after tying Inara up, brands her with a very intricate design, searing her flesh and leaving her scarred.
The Gardener bans Avery from touching Inara ever again due to this incident, and closely monitors him from then on, much to Avery's outrage.
Avery continues to do his raping/torturing thing, in one notable case hurting a girl so bad she broke numerous bones, and she eventually died from said wounds.
After Desmond, Avery's 14 or 15 yeard old little brother, begins attending the Garden, Avery slowly becomes jealous of the fact that all of the girls like his brother (Because he doesn't hurt them), as well as the fact that he's started sleeping with Inara, who Avery lusts after most of all.
Later, Avery commits the worst act in the story by going out one night and kidnapping his own girl, and by the time he brings her to the Garden, he's beaten and raped her horribly. She's also 12 years old. Yeah.
The Gardener flies into a rage, not only at his son's ignorance in kidnapping someone in public, but also because it's a kid. He canes Avery for this, the first time he actually strikes his son in the novel.
Desmond eventually calls the police on his father and brother, and, when the police seemingly leave without evidence, Avery gleefully holds his brother in place while his father canes the boy.
However, the Gardener "only" gives him 20 lashes, which annoys Avery, as he begins claiming his father always gave Desmond "everything he wanted". Avery then pulls a gun, attempts to gun down both his father and brother, and then tries to rape Inara (Again).
Inara smacks him away, and, as the police return to fully investigate, Avery needlessly snaps one of the girl's necks while cackling like a lunatic before being gunned down by one of the girls. Karma's a bitch, you jackass.
The (Surviving) girls, along with Inara, are rescued and begin working to reconnect with their parents, some of whom haven't seen their daughters for years.
Freudian Excuse or other redeeming qualities?
Nope.
The Gardener is indeed a creep, but, beyond his (ahem) "hobby", he's a perfectly upstanding guy, being a loving husband and father who didn't even expose Avery to the Garden until his late teen years. Avery's just a sadistic a-hole who forces his dad to put a leash on him.
Inara seems to theorize that Avery wanted his dad's love, but nothing supports this. When he finally confronts his father in the end, he just screams like a spoiled brat about how Desmond gets "extra" privileges, when Avery himself had those privileges, he just threw them away when he continuously acted like a sadistic torturer.
And any arguments that he might have cared about his father and wanted his approval go out the window once he happily tries to murder him.
Heinousness?
Worst in-story. While his father is a serial killer/rapist, he's extremely gentle and tries to cause the least amount of discomfort during both, making Avery stick out even more due to how brutal he is when dealing with both acts.
Overall, we've got a serial rapist/killer who, unlike his father, tortures and brutalizes his victims, in some cases so much so that die, he tortured and brutalized a 12 year old girl while planning to kill her, he attempted to murder both his father and younger brother, and he needlessly snapped a girl's neck just to be a prick when he realized he had lost.
Final Verdict?
Firm Keeper.
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!
Avery. Also, I noticed someone added a bit more to Diana's entry, so I decided to revise it:
- Complete Monster: A sociopath since the day she was born, Diana is sent to a mental institution after she played mind games with her father, ultimately causing him to kill himself. While there, she manipulates a depressed Sophie into becoming friends with her, and became physically abusive towards her, going as far as to break her legs when she heard that Sophie might be getting released. As a ghost, she latches herself onto Sophie, enslaving her in the process. Wanting Sophie to herself, she murders both of her husbands when they attempted to heal their wife's mind, and she stalks and terrorizes Sophie’s children Rebecca and Martin, eventually opting to kill them in utter defiance of Sophie's demands. When two police officers are alerted on a potential break in, they go to investigate; Diana savagely murders both of the officers, and attempts to kill Rebecca in front of Sophie. Self-serving and hostile, Diana sought complete control over Sophie's body, and would murder anyone who came in her way.
edited 9th Aug '16 7:27:41 PM by AustinDR
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I didn't really mean "upstanding" in the "Wow! What a stand-up guy! He's a genuinely good person, even if he does kill people!" sort of way.
I more so meant it in the "He's not violent in the way most serial killers are, and treats his family good." sort of way. But I can see how that got severely lost in translation. XD
edited 9th Aug '16 7:11:35 PM by Ravok
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!OK, here's my attempt to a write up for Damien. It probably needs some editing.
Damien was created as an attempt to fulfill a prophecy about one who would unite Human/Alien hybrids known as Seyunolu; he took this to mean that he was a God with an Omniscient Morality License who was meant to kill humanity. When some of the people who created him questioned his plan to obtain a group of four Seyunolus, Damien decides that they were heretics and killed them. He then went to the company who created the four previously mentioned Seyunolus and slaughtered all of their other employees, deliberately killing people in front of the Seyunolus to make them fear him. Damien planned to slowly grow the Seyunolu into an army to eliminate humanity, using the sole female Seyunolu Grace as breeding stock. When Grace escaped from his nest, Damien sent Hedge out to recapture her, threatening him with death if he didn't return with something; when Hedge returns with a transformed Elliot instead, Damien hits Hedge for not returning with a female Seyunolu and keeps Elliot tied up and refuses to provide him with food until he reveals information about where he came from. Finally, when Damien was wounded by Grace after he attempted to kill her friends, thus providing possible evidence of his mortality, Damien decides to self-destruct in order to defeat Grace, deciding that either he was a God and his body was irrelevant, or he was a mortal and life wasn't worth living.
Feel free to suggest tweaks, pot-holes, things I've missed, or things that should be added or removed.
edited 9th Aug '16 7:54:03 PM by thok
I have a question. How exactly do we do indexing and linking for YMMV-only pages created solely to carry CM examples?
For instance, the film Mr Accident only exists as a YMMV page, without a corresponding film page. It doesn't exist on any indexes and isn't linked to from any page (the CM page links to the nonexistent film version of the page). The page currently exists as an orphan page, and is as a whole, kinda pointless since the CM page itself already covered everything.
edited 9th Aug '16 10:35:17 PM by Wuz
I'd hardly consider something that wasn't even in the game as something that held more value as what's in the game itself. Didn't we still keep Mordekaiser because something that could disqualify him was never actually represented? On the other side of the coin, I don't see why something that was never shown should keep Cook-Cook as a CM.
You could argue that it's a game mechanic, but he reacts to the death much differently than how other NPC's would react to destroying something that belongs or harming something in the area. Most would only attack the Player Character. Cook-Cook was specifically designed to go mad and attack indiscriminately at the death of one specific brahmin.
edited 9th Aug '16 10:43:48 PM by Awesomekid42

edited 9th Aug '16 11:56:55 AM by Awesomekid42