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. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
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
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Leeds
- Will Eisner's Wonder Man: General Attilla is the dictator of Tatonia. When a rebellion crops up, he redirects the majority of his nation's food supply to the military and orders refugees massacred to put it down. Bombing a Red Cross hospital, Attilla's goons hold a couple wealthy socialites volunteering there for ransom, despite never intending to release them. After Wonder Man thwarts the general's plans, he plots to start another war to regain control.
Yeah its a for Leeds Knight of Cerebus doesn't automatically become Complete Monster
So is anyone voting for Il Carnefice because it still stands as 3 ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
right now. I know that there this heated discussion on wether or not Lex counts as one, but please don't keep on ignoring my posts. It doesn't matter if you guys vote and , just ignore what I have to offer. Its really rude and it feels like I'm wasting my time.
edited 7th Jun '17 11:23:05 PM by G-Editor
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Sorry, I honestly didn't see that.
I think I lean towards a on him, though. The AC heinousness standard is pretty messed up, though he does sound icky.
I want to once more challenge PM Brian Green from Monster.Whoniverse under Torchwood. This time I'm advocating for a full cut.
While the man is a heinous Dirty Coward to near sociopathic levels, and the man is presented completely negatively, his heinousness is nowhere near the level demonstrated by the 456 ambassador. His most heinous act (sacrificing 10% of Earth's children) is debatable due to being a reaction to the demands of the 456 ambassador. Without this, his definite heinous acts of political murders and abusing Forbisher are not really up to the heinous standard.
This all together convinced me that he is not worthy of the CM treatment. While lots of nasty tropes can be applied to him, Complete Monster is not one of them.
edited 8th Jun '17 12:49:51 AM by Wuz
Agree. I haven't managed to go further than season 1 of Torchwood but just by reading the write up I've always fell that he is more a Dirty Coward than a CM.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
So should I cut Teppei and merge the remaining 4 to the Visual Novels part of Other Media?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
This is perhaps a bit a nitpick but I find the write up for the Dalek Time Controller from Big Finish kinda... subpar. It just says that he's distinct from other daleks by his personality, vaguely states that he's responsable the time war without elaborating how and that he manages to piss off the Doctor. Don't get me wrong. I'm not requesting for a cut but it could be better.
Yeah I also advocate that Green be cut. Sure what he did was awful but it was only one thing compared to what the Ambassador list of atrocities.
Speaking of Doctor Who is Lightysnake still going to EP Solomon as he said he would do before?
Cut Teppei and Green.
New proposal, from Goth (2003).
Who's the candidate?
Goth, a maniacal zealot for the gothic lifestyle.
What does she do?
Our heroes, Crissy and Boone, first stumble upon Goth at a nightclub, where she offers them some drugs that are supposed to recreate a near death experiemce. Our first indication that Goth is batshit is when two thugs try to mug them. Goth splits one's head open to drive them off, then goes right back to the drugs like nothing happened.
They try the drugs, and wake up in Goth's van. Having not listened to their after school specials, they trusted a stranger and have been kidnapped! Goth has taken them to learn "what goths really do." Yeah, this'll end well.
As her first demonstration, she kidnaps another guy and rapes him by threatening castration if he refuses. Double Standard Rape: Female on Male is completely averted here; the scene's Nightmare Fuel and treated as such.
Goth then takes our heroes to a Happy-Ending Massage parlour to prove her (100% wrong) point that All Men Are Perverts. To do this, she forces Boone to schtup one of the girls or she'll kill every single person in the room.
Soon after, we learn that Crissy has had a plan going the whole film, ever since she met Goth. This plan? Revenge! You see, a couple years back, Crissy's sister was murdered, and she thinks Goth did it.
Our heroes burst into a hotel room to stop Goth, only to find her trying to rob a guy. To get the cash, she starts mutilating a hooker the guy had around. The attempt at taking our resident Villain Sue down ends with the guy and hooker dead, and Goth threatening to kill both Boone and Crissy if the latter doesn't kill anybody that night.
Our duo of saps scouts out some victims as decoys, trying to get Goth off guard. They fail, and Crissy is forced to kill a victim. Goth kills the other, before she KO's the duo and locks them in a trunk for the climax.
This climax? Goth drugs Crissy up in such a way that she goes mad, massacring an entire party and Boone. She then reveals that she didn't actually kill Crissy's sister, but made her think she did for manipulation purposes. This causes Crissy to finally stab Goth to death. However, Crissy has been driven to homicidal mania by the Trauma Conga Line, and has become the new Goth. As Goth planned.
Yep, The Bad Guy Wins. FUCK THIS MOVIE!
Heinousness?
Big Bad, sets it.
Mitigating factors?
Now, from my description, you could infer that this is plotless edgy grimdark bullshit. It is indeed edgy grimdark bullshit, but there is a little plot. The characters have identifiable personalities, and there is character development. It's utterly godawful, but it's there.
As for Goth herself, none. Complete Ax-Crazy psychobitch.
Verdict?
edited 8th Jun '17 2:14:15 AM by DemonDuckofDoom
for Goth
Goth
Remind me not to watch movies like that.
So Lex is split as far as the voting goes, so I decided to drop him for now. I still say my arguments still stand, but I say put a pin in it until Justice League comes out, to see if he is infact brainwashed by Darksied. That said, even if you where to argue that he's being controlled, he doesn't start being controlled until very late into the movie. It pretty much has more to do with his arc not being over yet.
And yes to Goth by the way, all though I can't help but feel this movie is some kind of Chick Track esque anti goth propoganda.
edited 8th Jun '17 4:00:02 AM by Beast
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."
to Goth. This might be a stupid question, but assuming that's not her real name, do we ever learn her real name?
On a sidenote, When I come back from my break, I will eventually propose this one character from a torture porn film. I was gonna ignore it because it was labeled as torture porn, but candidates from films like these make me wonder if the film would really be bad enough to be considered edgy grimdark trash. Aside from creepypastas, there isn't much clarity on the case. We will discuss it when the time comes.
jjj
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
If nobody objects, I'll cut Green and take care of the When They Cry stuff tomorrow.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Leeds and Goth. Green sounds like a cut.
Torture porn? Really? I don't think anyone here will be too enthusiastic about that discussion.
Goth
Leeds
That's putting it mildly. Must you, Bob?
And there's an evil goth. Named Goth.
Wow.
to Luthor and Leeds. Not sure about Il Carnefice, but it does sound like he might not be heinous enough, so I'm leaning on as well.
to Goth.
By the way, season 4 of The 100 ended about two weeks ago and... still nobody count. All of the characters who can even be considered villains had redeeming qualities and people they cared about, including the one who tried to prevent humanity from surviving the apocalypse. Also, now we can now add "performing painful experiments on unwilling subjects, leading to their death" to the list of crimes committed by the main characters.
Actually, Bob, I think we'd all prefer it if you stay away from a torture porn proposal. There's not "not much clarity" on it, we've repeatedly made our disgust for these kinds of films clear. There's much more tasteful media to be looking into.
Anyways, no to Luthor. Even with some added crimes in the extended cut, I'm still not convinced he meets the heinous standard of the DCEU.
Foreign Troper
I'm abstaining because I haven't seen the Extended Cut of Bv S (and don't plan to, because that movie was god awful already in it's cinematic version), but honestly, I have the feeling Lex Luthor is one of those candidates a few people vote down on principle when they read the name.
edited 8th Jun '17 7:27:20 AM by Forenperser
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
I wasn't saying Leeds was automatically a CM because she was a Knight of Cerebus, but that I thought she passed the baseline just on her own merits. Also, when I compared her to Loveless and Casanova, it was on a much, much smaller scale. That said, I'll acknowledge that it was a little too generous to do so.
I thought I made a good case and I expected a split rather than everyone saying no. Given the movie, it was gonna be an uphill battle and I'm surprised I didn't consider that more when I got started. No one really wanted to talk about it and given the fact that not many weighed in when I asked to be PMed, nobody else probably saw it.
Now that I think about it, if the girls had died in the fire and Leeds hadn't batted an eye or Leeds went out of her way to kill more people for the hell of it, she could have had a better chance. I thought much like Madison Bell she'd barely make it, but the ultimate difference is that Swimfan is a serious movie and Baywatch is not serious enough.
FYI, Polar Phantom seemed to agree with me on her that she'd barely make it.
edited 8th Jun '17 7:53:10 AM by futuremoviewriter
Luthor, like Magneto, is not supposed to qualify and attempts at making him qualify inevitably fail to leave him as any sort of recognizable character. TDKSA is a case in point. The character that Miller tries to call Luthor is utterly unrecognizable as such (and is drawn to resemble Kingpin more than anything else I might note; it's pretty clear what character Miller wanted to be writing) and qualifies for the trope less because of a brilliant exploration of what could happen if Lex truly abandoned his redeeming traits and more because Miller is a raging incompetent as a writer and fails to convey anything meaningful about the character.
DCEU!Luthor is, I should note, for all his many, many problems, more recognizably Luthor than that idiocy Miller wrote, what with having actual recognizably Lex-like motivations. So yes, that makes all of us want to take a good hard look at him before we qualify him. Believing Their Own Lies is a big part of Luthor's characterization after all, as is being defined by early childhood abuse. Both those factors are in play with Eisenberg's Luthor, and both of them are disqualifying to some extent.
However the single most important reason we are voting Luthor down is that he does not clear the DCEU's heinous bar. Ultimately, he's not even trying to, which is pretty consistent with portrayals of Lex, who rules the other DC villains on the basis of intellect and force of will, not levels of evil. He's not out to end the world the way that Zod was, and as we'll see shortly, WW has a number of villains who, despite lacking all the modern resources Lex can bring to bear, only ratchet up the heinous bar higher.
edited 8th Jun '17 7:54:22 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Which is funny, because doesn't Kingpin (not including Max!Kingpin),for the most part, famously love his family?
I have a bit of an unusual example I'm not 100 percent unsure of right now....before I get to all my writeups.
The series?
What's The Work?
Thriller was a suspense and horror anthology show that began airing in the 1960s. What makes it different from others of its ilk? It was hosted by Boris Karloff who would also star in several episodes! The subject of one of those effortposts today is The Incredible Doktor Markesan...Our heroes are Fred and Molly, a recently unemployed married couple. Hoping to seek employment at an institute, Fred has brought Molly to his old family home which is run by his uncle Konrad Markesan...first thing we see is a sign warning trespassers will be shot. Uncle Konrad is a cheery fellow.
So, when they arrive...something is wrong. Markesan looks like a walking corpse, the estate has fallen into disrepair, there's no food anywhere...Markesan wants them gone immediately, but upon Fred's insistence, he allows them to stay...but locks them in their room at night with the caveat they cannot go around the grounds at any time....
Oh, and please ignore the fact that the family crypt has a spot showing good old Uncle Konroad was interred there not long ago....
Who's Our Monster?
The Incredible Doktor Markesan was a respected professor at Penrose University who began experimenting on cadavers to prove he could bring the dead back to life using a formula obtained with mold in graves. Naturally, this was treated with...skepticism by his colleagues, who ended up ostracizing him for it. Markesan left the university and died soon after...but tested the formula on himself and rose from the dead. Proceeding to haunt his old home, Markesan learned his former colleagues had died and decided to take a...unique revenge.
Stealing the corpses of the three professors, Markesan slowly revived them, turning them from shambling zombies until they had some of their former faculties left...and nightly reanimates them, just enough so their bodies are still rotting, causing them incredible torment just from being alive. Each night, Markesan brings them back and subjects them to an inquisition, making them repeat their testimony against him as he cackles and refuses to let them die in peace. And he gives no sign he's ever going to be satisfied. Fred discovers the little inquisition as Markesan continuously forces the three dead professors to give their testimony again and again, reveling in their pain and enjoying humiliating them with a "who was right after all, huh?" Fred manages to get to the Penrose university where he learns Markesan is supposedly dead (he'd kept his revival a secret thus far)....and realizes he left Molly alone in the house.
Markesan has decided that his nephew and his wife can't really be trusted to keep their mouths shut, and Molly is shown being cornered by Markesan and his zombie slaves....Fred arrives back, only to be captured. Markesan gleefully informs his nephew he's going to kill him and make him an experiment as well. Fred struggles, but one of the zombies manages to regain its will enough to stop and destroy Markesan, as well as the machine keeping the zombies' nightly supply of mold going. Markesan is destroyed, the day is saved...
....only for Fred to find Markesan has already murdered and revived Molly, the final shot of the episode being his zombie wife entering her coffin.
Heinous by the story?
For Thriller, and for 60s horror in general? I'd say so. Trying to kill and reanimate Fred and Molly as zombie slaves is nasty, but while he didn't exactly kill the three professors (I think, it's a bit vague on this), endlessly reanimating them to torture them constantly is...a unique form of monstrosity. I'm not really certain there's any other precedent for it there. So, I'd say yes.
Mitigating Qualities?
Markesan only expresses emotion when he's being evil. Before that, he's a dour, icy man, but when conducting his inquisition and trying to kill Molly and Fred, Karloff hams it up deliciously...
Now, as for Molly and Fred, Markesan is at first willing to offer them money to get them away from the estate, but changes his mind and invites them to stay with caveats as Fred refuses, solely so they don't tell anyone he's back. It's a bit weird he doesn't just kill them at the start, but it's sort of implied he's interested in seeing Molly gather food there as he hasn't eaten in years (so it gives him a chance to recapture simple pleasures of life)...he certainly doesn't love either of them, given how he treats them and what he plans to do with them. It might just be plain bad writing, as his plans to do away with them are seriously delayed, but this may be lazy writing more than anything.
Also, your colleagues think you're a nutter for trying to raise the dead with mold is not sufficient justification to continuously revive them and torture them night after night just to show how right you were when one of them basically goes "dude, we GET IT, please just knock it off and let us rest in peace!" Markesan's response is basically "Hahahaha. No."
Conclusion?
I'd give Markesan a yes. It's a relatively limited bodycount, but it's a very unique and horrifying set of crimes for a modest sixties horror of all things.
The discussion about Eisenberg's Luthor, by the way, reminds me of something that's been said before and apparently needs to be said again, namely that we do not write off a Freudian Excuse if one is presented. We can debate if it is sufficient but we cannot pretend it away.
"Sufficient" does not, for the record, mean "justifies what he does". Sufficient in the context of a Freudian Excuse means "explains what he does". If the character's psychological damage cause their actions to make sense, and demonstrate they are driven by something other than inherent evil or self-interest, they cannot qualify.
Eisenberg's Luthor clears that bar. He's motivated by the damage that his father inflicted on him, and we know this, because he flat out screams at Superman about it. No one, man or deity, saved him from being abused by his father, and when he sees people claiming Superman is a god, it sends him over the edge and makes him determined to prove that Superman is not god, because if he were a god then that would mean he deliberately left Lex to be beaten by his dad. In Lex's mind, if the world acknowledges Superman as god, then the world is saying that Lex deserved his father's abuse.
His actions follow from the excuse. Point B logically follows from Point A. That's always been the measuring stick for Freudian Excuse.
Yes.
edited 8th Jun '17 8:12:38 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
