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Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

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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:

     Previous Post 
Complete Monster Cleanup Thread

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] 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

MGD107 Since: Feb, 2015
#87651: Jun 21st 2017 at 3:36:04 PM

[tup] to Nomura Shuhei.

Okay I've been going over the revamped Whoniverse Monster page. Overall it looks great, I just have two things. One Sutekh is now potholed as an Eldritch Abomination, and I don't think he qualifies as that. He's ancient and powerful sure, but he's not a complex, indescribable and mind breaking lovecraftian horror. He's a just an incredibly powerful member, of an incredibly powerful and advanced race of aliens. Basically Sufficiently Advanced Alien fits him a lot better.

Second is the new Thawn entry mentions Thawn twice in one sentence "Thawn, without a moment's hesitation, Thawn...".

I'm also not sure if Mrs. Gillyflower is the best image, but I have nothing better so I won't carry that point.

edited 21st Jun '17 3:40:10 PM by MGD107

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#87652: Jun 21st 2017 at 3:38:59 PM

[up] I actually looked at the episode page, and eldritch abom. is there, while sufficiently...isn't. I just requested the fix for Thawn.

Or of course, considering his quote, we could use Card-Carrying Villain.

edited 21st Jun '17 3:45:12 PM by ACW

MGD107 Since: Feb, 2015
#87653: Jun 21st 2017 at 3:45:56 PM

Really? Thanks for telling me, I'll have to fix that.

But yeah, not only is he not unique, at furthest he's a Humanoid Abomination, considering he looks like an ordinary man but has the head of a Jackal with glowing green eyes.

Overall though, I feel Sufficiently Advanced Alien, is probably the trope that fits him the best. Considering its more or less the Sci-fi equivalent of a Physical God.

Edit: Possible, but I don't know. A big part of Sutekh is simply how powerful he is, to this day he's still pretty much the only antagonist who could wipe out all life in the entire universe single handily. The doctor outright calls him more powerful than anything he had ever faced in his life (and he might still count as that in the present).

edited 21st Jun '17 3:49:49 PM by MGD107

skteosk Since: Feb, 2011
#87654: Jun 21st 2017 at 4:12:43 PM

Okay, got 6 or 7 upvotes so I'll go ahead with the write-up:

  • Sharpe
    • Colonel Brand from "Sharpe's Mission": A double agent who starts his career by personally killing an injured British officer, then carrying him back to the British lines and being hailed a hero for trying to save him. This is the first of several acts of so-called heroism arranged by his handler French Colonel Cressan, who wants Brand to lure Sharpe and Ross into a trap. Brand murders a Gypsy couple who saw him meeting Cressan, then slaughters a Gypsy camp in a failed to attempt to kill the couple's daughter, who also witnessed the meeting. He leads his men in massacring a group of French ex-deserters set up by Cressan and given faulty gunpowder so they were effectively unarmed, making a point of sadistically garrotting the one who ran furthest. Despite giving them the self-aggrandising name Brand's Boys, he has no loyalty to his men, calmly telling Sharpe that he abandons anyone who is injured. Even after being exposed and arrested, he tries to convince Sharpe to let him and his men massacre a fort garrison who have also been set up Cressan. Smug, arrogant and believing himself invulnerable right up to the end, he can't resist Bullying a Dragon:
    Well, you've had your fun, Sharpe. But it'll be over in the next few minutes when the Frogs come over that wall. Then you'll need a friend. I'll be your friend, Sharpe, but you're going to have to beg. Because they'll torture you, they'll torture you and they'll torture Ross. You'll be begging me to make them stop. And by god, I'm going to make you beg, Sharpe!

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#87655: Jun 21st 2017 at 4:31:01 PM

I'm not sure if [up] is bad enough compared to the other 2.

As for Sutekh, what about Nepharious Pharaoh?

MGD107 Since: Feb, 2015
#87656: Jun 21st 2017 at 4:44:45 PM

Interesting. But I don't know, I mean he invokes the imagry (as inverse, his race the Osiran's were a great influence on the Egyptians) but he never was actually Pharaoh, comparable to one or for that matter truely leader of anything.

He was basically an incredibly powerful member of a race, where he was effectively a reasonably high up bureaucrat, over time he became consumed with so much paranoia and hate that he grew to dispise everything that lived and longed to destroy it all so it could never challange him. Problem is, he is powerful enough to achieve that.

edited 21st Jun '17 4:49:12 PM by MGD107

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#87657: Jun 21st 2017 at 4:57:00 PM

Well, you know the ep, so I'll let you make the final decision on what the pothole should be.

edited 21st Jun '17 4:57:09 PM by ACW

MGD107 Since: Feb, 2015
#87658: Jun 21st 2017 at 5:09:04 PM

Well, upon reflection I guess he's close enough to qualify for the Nepharious Pharaoh. But if its the same with you, I would prefer if it was just kept on Sufficiently Advanced Alien as that's what he comes across closest as in the episode (nigh-omnipotent power, coupled with incredibly advanced technology).

I'll make the alteration to the episodes page.

Stellarvore Since: Apr, 2016
#87659: Jun 21st 2017 at 5:39:04 PM

@Lightysnake I personally thought it was one of his more accessible writings. As for Ballard, yeah, for a time I thought that he might have been too insane to qualify, but one of his lines near the end of the book (which I'll mention in the EP) showed that he was at least "sane" enough to be fully aware of his actions and to have a clear sense of right and wrong. So I'll give it a go then.

What is the work?

Cormac McCarthy's third book, Child of God, tells the story of Lester Ballard, an increasingly antisocial and violent homeless man who roams the countryside in search of victims.

Who is he? What has he done?

Lester Ballard is, as stated before, an antisocial man who roams the countryside of Sevier County. Even before he actually starts doing his ... thing, he's shown to be a bit of a Jerkass. He's introduced trying to scare off a bunch of people at an auction being held on what was once his property, threatening them with his rifle.

Later on, after some decidedly not-so-nasty activities (voyeuristic and creepy, for sure, but heinous? Nah) he finds a woman sleeping under the trees on Frog Mountain, gets a peep at her, and rips off her dress. The woman accuses him of rape and he's brought down to the Sevier County Jail for a few nights before he's released.

After some more uneventful chapters, Ballard catches a robin and heads to a house to wait for a friend, and gives the robin to a woman's child as a "playpretty", knowing full well that the child will (and he does) kill it ("It's hisn to kill if he wants to"). Now here's where the book's nastiness really begins to take off. While out hunting squirrels, he stumbles across the bodies of a young couple in their car. He has sex with the woman's corpse, takes it back to his house (or at least, I assume it's his house), then goes to town to buy some clothes for her. Later on, the house burns down, and the corpse with it.

Now completely homeless, Ballard is forced to spend the rest of the frigid winter in caves. He revisits the woman and her child again, then tries to persuade her to "show her tits". She rightfully kicks him out, and he watches her through the window and shoots her, and when she doesn't die, he goes back in and shoots her again, then sets the house on fire with the child in it. Ballard narrowly escapes jail time again, but once he's in the clear, he keeps killing (although the only way we know this is that the narrator says he was taking his victims' clothing, and a scene where he kills a couple, and another where he kills a man who was digging out his septic tank) over the seasons, until he ends up inexplicably getting his arm shot off while trying to kill a man.

When he's in the hospital, his nurse asks him if he wants to know whether his latest intended victim is dead or alive, and when she tells him he's alive, she asks, "You really don't care one way or the other, do you?"note  Ballard responds, "Yes I do, I wish the son of a bitch was dead." He's then visited by a mob of hunters who want him to help them find the bodies of his victims in exchange for him being let off easy. He vehemently denies killing anyone, until he caves and tells them where he's keeping the bodies ... in caves. He leads them to one of these caves and escapes them before returning to the hospital, saying, "I'm supposed to be here." Cut to 1965, Ballard (like Ed Gein, who was the basis for his character) has not been found guilty and is instead institutionalized where he later dies (ha! A McCarthy Big Bad who's not a Karma Houdini! How about that?).

In the (sort of) epilogue, a farmer's mules run off, and two neighbor boys go to look for them in the hole where they fell, but instead of finding the mules, they find the unmarked grave where the corpses of Ballard's victims lie rotting.

Mitigating/disqualifying factors?

Freudian Excuse? Here's partly why I asked if he'd count: his mother had run off and his father killed himself when he was young, and according to a character in one of the interludes, Ballard had apparently not been the same since. Although it's not exactly clear if he had a loving relationship with his father or not. Then his house burned down, and while this scene is surprisingly kind of a Tear Jerker (even with the necrophiliac context), it happened after the sexual assault.

Heinous standard? While he's easily the worst person in the novel, this is written by Cormac McCarthy, so it's safe to say that this is set in a Crapsack World with plenty of other assholes. Like the dumpkeeper who abused his own daughters for getting pregnant. Or even the mob at the end. While Lester Ballard is, again, a horrible man, it does seem pretty cruel to force a one-armed man to accompany them and lead them to the bodies. But maybe that's just me overthinking it. Anyway, this is a no-brainer.

Generic Doomsday Villain? I think not. He displays plenty of personality throughout the whole novel. That is, enough personality beyond "I must kill" or "Look at me I'm a badass".

Played for Laughs? In all honesty, I found Child of God to be a surprisingly funny novel in a lot of parts. But when it comes to necrophilia and serial murder, it's played entirely seriously.

Regret or remorse? See what he had to say about his last (intended) victim. That should tell you everything. I should also mention that I don't think he went back to the hospital because it was the right thing to do, but because he would prefer to be there than to risk being hunted for the rest of his life.

Agency? While his sanity is, indeed, called into question once or twice ("Whatever voice spoke him was no demon but some shed self that came yet from time to time in the name of sanity, a hand to gentle him back from the rim of his disastrous wrath"), Lester seems — unlike Gein — aware enough of his crimes to the point where any insanity is no excuse.

Loved ones? He's perfectly capable of making friends somehow, but then again, so was Harry Powell, who was a hell of a lot more charismatic than him. Although like Powell, he did it primarily for manipulative or selfish purposes, like getting himself some whiskey.

Verdict?

Still not sure, to be perfectly honest. Losing a parent is enough to mess someone up for life, but I don't know if it would be enough to even remotely justify the things Lester has done.

edited 22nd Jun '17 8:44:05 AM by Stellarvore

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#87660: Jun 21st 2017 at 5:47:28 PM

When I read Child Of God, I found that like most of Cormac's works...evil is meant to be this dark force that gets personified through his characters. I don't recall it ever being indicated or stated Ballard loved his father, or even how it turned him into a serial-killing psycho (which he apparently went into all of his own).

I think I'd lean yea. on him. This is a complex one, to be sure.

DemonDuckofDoom from Some Pond in Hell Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
Stellarvore Since: Apr, 2016
#87662: Jun 21st 2017 at 5:53:20 PM

Yeah, it never said one way or the other. It's just the ambiguity that left me wondering. The only other time his father is mentioned is when he thought he heard him whistling. I should also add that he beat up at least one other child when he was a kid, so, there's that, too. He was pretty nasty from the start.

Tyk5919 Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
#87663: Jun 21st 2017 at 6:15:35 PM

Mm......even with the Freudian Excuse, Lester Ballard seems like he would still count. So [tup] for him.

[up] And yes, with that in mind, I feel like he already had some issues to begin with before his father's suicide.

edited 21st Jun '17 6:16:55 PM by Tyk5919

I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
hopeshalllive Since: Jan, 2016
#87664: Jun 21st 2017 at 6:37:03 PM

Was there ever a discussion on Wonder Woman since it says Ludendorff is a monster.?

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#87665: Jun 21st 2017 at 6:42:11 PM

Yes, I proposed him and he was overwhelmingly approved.

chasemaddigan I'm Sad Frogerson. Since: Oct, 2011
I'm Sad Frogerson.
#87667: Jun 21st 2017 at 6:53:19 PM

[up]Right here. His name was misspelled throughout, so that's probably why you couldn't find it.

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
TommyFresh Since: Aug, 2013
hopeshalllive Since: Jan, 2016
#87670: Jun 21st 2017 at 7:18:08 PM

Ok I saw the approval of Luddendorf, but I have a question. Can a candidate be rejected if there was never an effortpost?

UtterKoala Since: Mar, 2017
#87671: Jun 21st 2017 at 7:24:07 PM

Alright, no recommendations for today. I need to do more research on villains I know of, or maybe find new villains from fiction I haven't seen yet.

Anyway. I'll leave you guys with a question. Who is the most Ax-Crazy CM you can think of? The villain doesn't have to be super heinous or anything like that. They just have to be batshit insane.

You don't even have to pick one! Just list the first few that pop into your head. For me, I'd have to say The Joker and Overlord

TommyFresh Since: Aug, 2013
#87673: Jun 21st 2017 at 7:29:09 PM

[up][up][up] I'm not sure what you mean. We usually don't vote on a character unless they get an effortpost. So yes, if someone doesn't provide us with enough information then that character would be rejected. And unapproved examples on YMMV pages are cut unless someone can explain why they belong.

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#87674: Jun 21st 2017 at 7:31:43 PM

I'll also reserve that new Venom film if nobody minds...interested in hearing Carnage will be the villan.

xie323 Since: Jul, 2009
#87675: Jun 21st 2017 at 8:11:50 PM

Found this on YMMV/Hydra

  • Complete Monster: Most of the organization's members count as this. Not just because they're Nazis, but also because some of the members don't even believe in the Nazi ideology itself. Said members's only reason for joining Hydra is usually either because they love to cause chaos and make people suffer...or in Bob's (One of Deadpool's friends) case, because they're being manipulated and have nowhere to go. Some of the organisation's most evil members in particular stand out, including, but not limited to:

Violates No Groups rule. The two examples below are keeps but this needs a better description


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