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
Scraggle: Yes they are. Speaking of entries, do the Space Ghost tweaks look okay? Particularly the Humans Are the Real Monsters pothole for Temple, and I changed a bit about Zorak's Adaptational Villainy?
Also, I guess they'd go to DC Comics, under the "Miscellaneous" group?
edited 8th May '17 10:33:41 AM by ACW
Miscellaneous indeed. Please remove the Humans Are the Real Monsters pothole, as it's pretty clear Temple's a case of Human Aliens... not an actual human, though.
edited 7th Jun '18 6:55:28 PM by Scraggle
Thanks for the advice, Scrags. That would indeed have been unpleasant.
Anyway,
Leroux.
You know way, way back when someone mentioned if Stellaris can have a CM character and I said that it's impossible for C Ms to appear in paradox grand strategy games given their nature and the whole no groups rule thing....well that still remains in place. I will admit, there was a character I wanted to discuss in two weeks from the Hearts of Iron Kaiserreich Game Mod due to new information and content updates very recently. However, the new events that may point towards a possible EP are way too vague to highlight how bad said character may be.
It's a shame really I feel, was looking forward to discussing this candiate in two weeks time.
There is one other possible candidate from Kaiserreich that I want to discuss in light of new informations, and his intentions are much more clearly highlighted, but I'm concerned about the heinousness bar of the setting and what he does with the resources he uses. Should I discuss this candidate with a mod first?
edited 8th May '17 12:57:42 PM by xie323
From Midnight Mass
- Complete Monster: Father Alberto Palmeri, the Evil Counterpart to Father Joe, is a former Pedophile Priest turned vampire. Before the events of the book, he molested numerous children—with increasing frequency towards the end of his human life— at St. Anthony's Church, and managed to get away with it because an altar boy had fingered Joe as the molester. When the plague of vampirism that had been ravaging the world hit New Jersey, his first course of action was to hide in the nuns' convent. After being found by a group of cowboys and turned by a Prime vampire named Gregor, he took up the role of Sinister Minister in a desecrated St. Anthony's, performing gruesome rituals that involve the sacrifice of humans to his undead congregation. During the assault on the purified St. Anthony's, he attempts to turn Joe, dangling his friend, the rabbi, Zev, over the church balcony and just above a wooden stake, threatening to drop him if he refuses.
- Franco is the vampire king of New York. He oversees the blood ranches, where human women as young as fifteen are rounded up by cowboys who earned enough "brownie points" for "stud time", which involves the rape and impregnation of the women in order to replenish the vampires' depleted blood source for future generations. After his meeting with Joe, he feeds him to a mindless feral vampire named Jason Devlin who he keeps as a pet in the hopes of Joe being left with even less sapience than Devlin. This plan backfires when Joe's wounds are cauterized by the sun when Lacey and Carole go out to the beach to bury him, but he's left fighting to retain his humanity for the remainder of the novel.
- James Barrett is a high-ranking cowboy and The Renfield to Franco. Where most other cowboys are horny, ignorant corrupt hicks who want to become vampires at worst and desperate Punch-Clock Villains trying to protect their families at best, Barrett is a highly educated, cannibalistic Corrupt Corporate Executive who treats Franco's empire like a business. When he first sees Joe naked, he examines the flesh on his body with the hopes of getting to cook and eat it. When Neal — another cowboy and the only person he held in even remotely high regard — dies, he only misses him because he was good muscle and a source of amusement. At the climax of the book, when it looks like Joe is about to throw Franco out into the sun, Barrett comes out holding Sister Carole at knifepoint, bargaining to let her live if Joe lets go of Franco.
It looks like they could count but they are not approved.
Quick question, just because I was wondering; does Offscreen Villainy count towards raising a series' Heinous Standard or not?
edited 8th May '17 3:16:33 PM by PhiSat
Oissu!Not much is known about The Lady's father, all we know is that he was part of the group that assassinated the old Autarch and that he fled the new Autarch with his daughter and a few other families and died at the hands of soldiers before her eyes. We don't learn what the old Autarch was like except that the issues with his rule didn't extend much farther than the capital. I forgot part of her Freudian Excuse, the nature of her magic gift means that she has hallucinations of people she kills which almost certainly drove her insane as she killed over a hundred of The Autarch's men during the revolution.
Leroux
I don't think Offscreen Villainy counts toward heinousness standard. Show, Don't Tell is in effect. Somebody correct me if I'm wron.g
'Tis correct. Being told that Doctor Nogoodnik committed some horrible atrocity is not evidence in favor of their CM status unless we see some direct or at least reasonable indirect evidence of that atrocity, such as dead bodies, grieving families, or the Doctor bragging about it to the heroes. We must also be able to know with a reasonable degree of certainty that Nogoodnik is the one who actually did the deed or commanded the deed to be done, otherwise the person narrating it could be lying or misinformed.
One main reason for this rule is that a Complete Monster must be seen to do the things they do. If they commit heinous acts entirely offscreen and nobody in the story shows signs of having been affected by them, is the character really monstrous?
edited 8th May '17 5:47:16 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Anyways...I think I have to say yes to the Autarch but no to the Lady.
The idea that she feels every death and goes insane from that is a real good Freudian Excuse besides going nuts from her father's death. Contrast to the Autarch who does things as nasty and worse without such an excuse.
Guys, please read the new effortpost and vote on these. We should never, ever, EVER let an effortpost go without being commented on.

With that said, "no" to Leroux. I've talked with Lighty about the series and I know that there are tons of nasty customers running around. Just comparing him to the two we already have listed, Hakeswill is a serial rapist with truckloads of rape, murder, and torture on his hands, and Dragomirov is a mass murderer with plenty of other atrocities on his hands as well. Based on this, I really don't think Leroux can measure up with just a few cases of torture and murder here.
Oh, yeah, ACW? The animated MIB candidates going next week?