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 won't oppose Leigh being cut since the heinious of the show standard escalated since Asylum. Coven has Delphine Lalaurie who tortured and murdered slaves For the Evulz and murdered a baby yet doesn't count (She loves her daughters thought she was a aweful mother) while half the Hotel cast are serial killers.
Very Common. In Murder House, there's two gay ghosts who plan to kill two babies to keep them forever and in the backstory, a guy murdered Dr' Montgommery's newborn in order to avenge the death of his girlfriend who died during an abortion. Larr'ys Wife also commited a Murder-Suicide with her children. In Coven, Lalaurie murders a baby to use his blood as cosmetic. Marie Laveau sacrifices a newborn every year to prolonge her life (and she's hundreds years old!). In Freak Show, Dell attempted to murders his son. In Hotel, John and his wife trick a dozen children to be eaten by the vampire Ramona. In Roanoke, The butcher sacrificed at least one little girl to pagan gods... Yet non of those characters count.
That isn't an exhaustive list at all. Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy naturally ensues.
edited 4th May '17 10:45:25 AM by Silverblade2
Alright, anyways... I've got a new Milestone keeper, so let's get to the punch. Originating from the Deathwish miniseries...
What's the setting?
The character himself, Deathwish, is a classic vigilante pulled straight from the Dark Age of Comics. A murderous vigilante who was the victim of a family massacre/raping that left only him alive, Deathwish naturally took to the mask and exclusively targeted sexual deviants. Now, with that said... Deathwish actually isn't the focus of this miniseries, nor is he necessarily even a major character in the Milestone universe in general. Our hero today is officer Marisa Rahm and her lover Dini, both pre-op transsexuals (which I normally wouldn't really specifically point out except it's sort of a really big deal in the comic proper... given that Milestone Comics sort of had that whole "progressive" mindset going for it?). Dini was the victim of a mad slasher lurking around the seedy Seaport district of Dakota City. Said slasher is our candidate today; James Gordon Staley, otherwise known as "Boots."
Who is Boots? What has he done?
Boots is an albinistic psychopathic mass murderer named after his steel-toed boots with a rather... sick fascination with transsexual people. A bit of backstory first... ten years before, Boots advanced on Dini — then the "diva" of one of the city's underground balls — and attempted to rape her. Dini fends him off with a well-placed Groin Attack, but some weird business later, Dini later allows Boots to start pimping her out. That was all in the past, though, and Dini turns to a much better life later. Boots? Not so much. For years, Boots starts sadistically raping, torturing, and murdering countless drag queens and transsexual prostitutes around Dakota City. Marisa first met Dini in the wake of one of Boots' strikes, leaving Dini's friend dead and Dini herself (the only surviving victim of Boots, I should mention) with a nasty scar on her forehead. At some point, Boots became bored with "just" serial murder and decides to turn to becoming an "artist." To start this new spree off, Boots starts targeting "houses" filled with foster families of transsexual prostitutes. In one of these houses, Boots massacres several prostitutes and arranges their bodies in sick poses, something Marisa comes across later.
When we next see Boots, Boots introduces himself gutting a dog with his steel-toed boots and meeting with some of his men, who, on his order, have committed another brutal massacre... torturing and murdering three more prostitutes, tying them up with barbed wire, and leaving the words "LOST, LUSTFUL, LONELY" on the three of them. Boots admires the handiwork for a while before asking about the fourth victim, who's been tortured and locked up in a closet by his goons. Boots tidies her up and admires her face... before ramming the spike of his boot directly into her and murdering her, laughing the whole time. He also takes the time to abuse some of his goons in the midst of making some of them wash his boots, forcing his spiked boots right into one of his unfortunate men's groin. We move on later to yet another one of Boots' murders; the crucifixion of three more victims, the centerpiece of which has been riddled with arrows.
Now, in the meanwhile... Boots has been stalking Dini, having renewed his sick obsession with her. One night, Boots breaks into Dini and Marisa's home, kidnaps Dini, and leaves a note inviting Marisa to his "ball" stapled to the cupboard by his boot. The implicit intention here? The torture and murder of Dini to make her into his latest piece of art. Although Dini manages to escape under Boots' knowledge, Marisa, with no knowledge of this, loses her mind and fights her way through Boots' club and confronts the man himself. Boots — dressed up like Dini and with a sickening grin on his face — is forced into a corner by both Marisa and Deathwish. Marisa offers Boots a gun to either shoot her and face Deathwish or blow his own brains own. Cackling like a madman to the end, Boots blows his own brains out, ending his spree for good.
Any mitigating factors?
Mmm... not really. His fascination with transsexuals never really goes beyond anything more than a sick obsession, and while he refers to them as "cherubs" and "beautiful," this comes with its fair share of issues. Number one? Boots only turned into a Mad Artist when he got bored of simply raping and murdering them. Number two, and the sticking point for me? In the wake of looking over one of the prostitutes his men have tortured, Boots cleans her up and admires her beauty... not one second before he guts her like a stuck pig and laughs his ass off once her blood sprays all over him. Boots just views his victims of choice as objects and toys. He's nothing more than a psychotic sadist.
Aside from that, nothing. Boots sets the heinous standard for his own work and he's about as nasty as a street-level baddie can be in the Milestone universe. Pass on all counts.
Conclusion?
I'm thinking a keep.
Thoughts?
Slight change:
- [[Film/Shooter]]: Colonel Isaac Johnson and Senator Harry F. Meachum are the leaders of an oil consortium that will do anything to further its own ends. Johnson and Meachum order a US military operation to slaughter a small village of 400 people in Eritrea, so they could build a pipeline on their land. They didn't even bother asking them to move, they simply killed them so the next village they target would move without question. Later Colonel Johnson contacts former Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger and states he needs his help to foil a plot to assassinate the President. This is a ruse, Johnson and Meachum assassinate the archbishop Ethiopia who was going to tell the President of their genocidal actions and frame Swagger for it. Jonhson tries to have one of his men kill Swagger, but he escapes (Johnson later kills this would be assassin later to cover his tracks). An FBI agent named Agent Nick Memphis begins to piece things together and investigate the possibility that Swagger is innocent, so Johnson and Meachum send some goons to kidnap him and kill him in a way that makes it look like suicide, before Swagger saves him. Meachum and Johnson try to force Swagger out of hiding by kidnapping Sarah Fenn, the widow of his best friend who died in a mission. They have her beaten (and possibly raped) and try to use her as bait, to lure Swagger into a trap to kill him. Swagger manages to save her, but with insufficient evidence of crime committed far from US soil, the department of Justice lets Jonhson and Meachum go free. Johnson and Meachum are later seen laughing about escaping justice and plan to build another pipeline in Ecuador and kill anyone who stands in their way, when Swagger arrives and kills them.
edited 4th May '17 9:01:58 AM by futuremoviewriter
easy, easy yes to Boots.
Also, time for a new proposal...
What's The Work?
Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks? SHAFT. Who's the cat who won't cop put when there's danger all about? SHAFT.
Damn right. We're talking about Shaft. From the 1970s film Shaft, staring Richard Roundtree as the titular hero, an anti-heroic private eye who sets out to save a young woman from the mob. The first film was stellar and spawned two...far inferior sequels. We're here to talk about the villain of the third one, Shaft In Africa
Who Is Our Villain?
Vincent Amafi is a wealthy businessman working out of Europe and Africa. In the opening scene of the film, Amafi takes a man who's the son of a diplomat named Emier who's been looking into Amafi's...businesses and executes him against the wall.
What's that business you ask? Well...Amafi finds young African men, who wish to go to Europe and more or less sells them into slavery, smuggling them into Europe into terrible conditions where they perform intense, backbreaking work for literal pennies at 16-18 hour days a week, seven days a week. No bones are made about this: it's slavery, plain and simple. And Amafi does it by the thousands, taking about seven hundred from Senegal and the Ivory Coast in a single shipment alone.
Emier himself recruits Shaft to get on the case with sizable compensation. Shaft ends up looking through Africa to Paris after Amafi's business. At one point, Amafi is shown driving past his own personal business which has African men working backbreaking labor. Amafi uses his girlfriend to seduce Shaft to kill him, but this fails. Shaft had also been investigated a low-rent apartment with a lot of African workers housed there, so Amafi sends his men after them, burning the place down and killing a large number of innocent workers inside, driving Shaft to a fury.
Shaft then attacks Amafi's own estate where he's keeping a number of African workers locked up below....and plans to simply detonate explosives he'd rigged to kill them in the blast or bury them alive should Shaft not step down. However, the workers get free when Shaft throws his gun down just before Amafi can execute Shaft. They promptly drag him out and drown him in his own fountain.
Heinous Standard?
Lesse...generic mobster, mobster, mobster...human trafficking mass murderer. I think we have a standout in the trilogy.
Redeeming Qualities?
Absolutely zip. He even admits on his girlfriend he doesn't love her. "I don't even really like her." in his own words.
Conclusion?
Amafi basically lures in thousands with promises of a better life only to rope them into slavery where they can't speak up about whatever's done to them for fear of deportation or worse. He's got a huge bodycount and feels absolutely zero remorse.
Easy yes
Boots and Amafi.
I don't think of this trope as a "badge of honour", I only get annoyed when characters I think count or don't count are either not represented or represented respectively. But I do NOT bemoan the point. I may have the right to dissent, but I also have a responsibility to be reasonable.
Anywho, got back from Got G Vol 2. Glorious. James Gunn's soul leaps from the screen. I especially liked the bit when [MOD POWERS ACTIVATED SPOILERS ARE NOT TOLERATED SON OF PHANTOM]
PM me if you wanna chat about it.
@ Knighthood: If you want to bring up Mohs again, you'll need to do an EP and explain why he was voted down and why it was wrong.
Also, for writeups..
- Die Hard: Hans Gruber, Big Bad of the first film, is an 'exceptional thief' in his own words who leads the supposed terrorist attack that captures the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles, killing the building's security. A former member of the German terrorist organization Volksfrei, Hans decides to serve his own profit over ideology by attempting to rob the Plaza of its bearer bonds. Executing the company head Joseph Takagi when he refuses to cooperate, Gruber has a SWAT team wiped out when they storm the building and when the hero John McClaine interferes, Hans murders a hostage who claims to be John's friend and threatens to begin shooting more until he "gets to someone you do care about!" It is revealed Hans never intends to let any hostages go, instead placing them on the roof to rig it with explosives and then detonate it to kill dozens of innocent people and fake his own death to get away clean with the money. While only succeeding in killing members of the FBI in this attempt, Hans immediately kidnaps John's ex-wife before attempting to kill her and John in retribution. Ruthlessly devoted to his own profit above anything else and mixing an utter lack of regard for human lives with an air of urbane sophistication, Hans Gruber remains the most deeply personal enemy John McClane has ever faced.
- Fong Sai Yuk II: Yu Chun-hoi is the second in command of the Red Flower Society. A thug, murder and rapist before even joining, Yu was enraged when his father chose another man as the successor of the society over him. Intending to take control, Yu schemes and murders his way to the top, sabotaging the hero Fong Sai-yuk in a way that will result in him being beaten into being a cripple. When his own son tries to call Yu out for his actions, Yu tries to murder him with no remorse and later overthrows the Society to make it a criminal organization, intending on doing away with any who oppose him later. When he faces Fong Sai-yuk, Yu even has the hero's mother tied with a noose around her neck and tries to shove her to hang anyways, just to spite his opponent.
- From Kill Ratio, General Lazar and his ex-KGB henchman Vorza are a sadistic pair of military officers trying to overthrow the new democracy of their Eastern European nation. Enacting a military coup that leaves their country in flames, the two occupy a hotel where the new President Petrenko is staying and lay siege to it while Vorza allows his men to brutalize and attempt to assault the staff physically or sexually, even gunning an escaping woman down just to show his men how it's done/ When one man objects to Lazar's actions, Lazar toys with him in a sword fight and executes him on the spot by beheading him. When their liaison to the west objects to them executing President Petrenko on air, Lazar and Vorza happily murder him before trying to kill Petrenko, believing her death will break the nation's very spirit.
- Shogun's Ninja: Shogen Shiranui is a vicious Koga ninja who leads a massacre of the Momochi clan, betraying and killing the clan leader and then attempting to kill the man's son and the other children. Years later, when the child is grown and returns to find his friends living as heroic thieves in Edo, Shiranui attempts to hunt them down and subject them to death in front of a crowd by having them boiled alive. When their ally rushes in and declares himself guilty to save his fellows before jumping into the boiling cauldron, Shiranui coldly cuts the man's wife down when she runs to her dying husband. When the crowds begin rioting, Shiranui simply has his men shoot them in response before resuming his attempt to finish his extermination of the Momochi.
- Wolf Road by Beth Lewis: Kreagar 'Trapper' Hallet is the adoptive father of the heroine Elka who teaches her to survive in the wilderness of British Columbia. In truth, Kreagar is a violent Serial Killer who targets women and children before butchering them and eating them, keeping their scalps as grisly trophies. Elka, now seen as his accomplice, attempts to escape with Kreagar hounding her through the novel. When she comes upon civilization again, we discover Kreagar continues to be active in his 'hunts' of murdering children and is targeting the son of the love interest of Elka's best friend Penelope before kidnapping the boy and murdering him as well. It is revealed Kreagar fed his victims to Elka as well and even had her shoot a little boy herself, something she had repressed from the trauma, in an attempt to turn her into a twisted reflection of himself. A man who lives by no code save the savage law of the wild he invents, Kreagar informs the hunter Lyons that it was Elka who murdered her son instead of him, dooming her to a life on the run, as a last act to deny her any comfort of civilization ever again.
edited 4th May '17 9:43:08 AM by Lightysnake
Since Hans Gruber is being officially added, I would like to raise a toast to he who is perhaps the most likable Complete Monster of all time:
ALL HAIL GRUBER!
The really Faux Affably Evil Monsters tend to be the most oddly likable, and Hans Gruber is practically the Trope Confider for Faux Affably Evil, so yeah...
And about Mohs, the problem with him is that the game and other characters treat him as though he was a WIE after he's died. It's incredibly stupid writing, I agree, but this trope has to take what the narrative presents a character as in mind, regardless of personal feelings.
Also, late
Nero.
edited 4th May '17 10:45:06 AM by ANewMan
Something I'm sensing over recent discussion... as has been said a thousand time, this trope is not a badge of honour, not for the work the characters from and not for the troper who finds the candidate.
Yes, the trope in itself is very much a cool concept, that's why 99% of us are here. We need to be careful when a) viewing something we like or b) hunting through works with the pre-set purpose of finding a CM. These biases make it a lot more difficult to take a rational analysis to the character's crimes and mitigating factors.
My two cents on all this is, try viewing media for the sake of enjoying it (whether genuinely or because it's So Bad, It's Good) and take the CM as an added bonus if you stumble upon one.
"...hunting through works with the pre-set purpose of finding a CM"
I've done this with my Criminal Minds examples and NCIS as well.
Then again, other works I've read BECAUSE of this thread (and in the case of Department 19, found additional CMs).
edited 4th May '17 11:05:17 AM by ACW
FYI, Knighthood 45 is also a ban evasion sock of someone else. They've gotten the boot, too.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanGruber's entry is otherwise perfecto but it should also mention how much of a Bad Boss he is: at point in the film he intends to blow up Mc Clane along with his right-hand man Karl, which has one of his subordinates pull an Even Evil Has Standards on him.
edited 4th May '17 11:30:12 AM by Kookosbanaani

One last thing about Emerson: It seems like he Would Hurt a Child. How common is that in the franchise?