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
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
We'll figure something out.
Speaking of old candidates, how come Meldar Prime from Jimmy Neutron didn't count? He has the worst actions in the series, what with being a galactic tyrant who regularly plays sick, sadistic games under risk of blowing up the losers planets, he has no FE or sympathetic qualities. The only thing that I can think of why he didn't count would him being Played for Laughs. I don't remember the film enough to recall whether he was or not though.
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
He's completely played for laughs.
Bringing up old candidates is not something I recommend. I feel it might bring up some bad blood.
If you wanna learn about an old candidate, rejected or otherwise, I recommend searching for it. If you still don't understand, then ask for clarification. That's sort of what I did for Agent Smith: I didn't understand why he didn't count, then Fighteer explained it to me and then I understood the rejection. And I did my research before asking.
Here is the all the expanded story of Nicol Bolas from the most recent story arc of Magic: The Gathering.
First, some backstory. The story line of Magic centers around the Planeswalkers. These beings were once normal mortals who awakened the Planeswalker Spark inside of them to become extremely powerful, immortal God-like beings who could walk between worlds at a whim and the most powerful could even create planes of their own. Alas, everything must come to an end. The events of the Time Spiral arc from around 2007 robbed them of their near infinite power and turned them into mere mortals who only retained the ability to Planeswalk. This brings us to the Elder Dragon Nicol Bolas.
Nicol Bolas is the Tyrant of Worlds, the Eldest Planeswalker, and the Forever Serpent. He has narratively become Magic's Big Bad and many of the story lines revolve around him trying to and ultimately succeeding in reigniting his spark. The Amonkhet arc about which I will be talking is when he is at his original power and building towards his ultimate goal of conquering the Multiverse.
Timewise, the story of Amonkhet begins shortly after Time Spiral when Bolas is bleeding omnipotence and travels to the Plane and usurps control to turn it into his own personal factory. Amonkhet is an Egypt inspired desert world that is slowly dying and all civilized life is centered in the city of Naktamun around the holy life-giving river Luxa. Anything that dies on the plane rises up as undead, so the city is protected by a magical barrier called the Hekma. Eight gods protect Naktamun and its people from the horrors in the wastelands.
Bolas arrives and rather easily defeats the entire pantheon, but ensures they stay down by depriving them of worshipers. In a single moment, he casts a spell that kills everyone on the plane old enough to walk which leaves the eight gods writhing in agony as their minds are flooded with the desperate cries of orphaned infants. Bolas subdues the gods, but not before telling them how they will be responsible for killing the people they worked so hard to protect. He mind rapes four of them: Hazoret, Oketra, Rhonas, and Kefnet, into believing he is the God-Pharaoh who created the Plane, them, and all its people. Bontu, the goddess of ambition, allies with Bolas upon seeing his power and keeps the rest under his thrall. The remaining three: the unnamed Scorpion, Locust, and Scarab gods, are corrupted to an even greater extent and hidden away for a later purpose.
For the next sixty years, Bolas corrupts the ancient rites of Amonkhet to turn the plane to his own needs. Under the guise of the God-Pharaoh, he creates a giant monument in the shape of his horns, wherein one of Amonkhet's two suns slowly moves to the center of, that signifies the day he will return and take his worthy children to the afterlife. Though, only the worthy may join the God-Pharaoh in the afterlife. To qualify, Bolas sets it up to where the citizens train their entire lives to pass five deadly trials, one for each god, where those that die during are turned into servant mummies that perform all manual labor on the plane. Those that pass are ultimately killed anyways by Hazoret and turned into the worthy dead and shipped beyond the so called Gate to the Afterlife to join the God-Pharaoh's side. Those that realize how utterly cruel this system is are deemed heretics and banished to the wastelands to turn into the zombies that pound away endlessly at the Hekma.
This entire system is set to repeat until the God-Pharaoh returns and begins the Accounting of Hours. All questions will be answered during the Hour of Revelations. The Gods and untested will prove their worth before the God-Pharaoh in the Hour of Glory. The God-Pharaoh will tear down the Hekma during the Hour of Promise for its protection will no longer be needed. The worthy will meet the Hour of Eternity and earn a place at the God-Pharaoh's side. Little did the people of Amonkhet know of the final hour: the Hour of Devastation. Predictably, when the second sun sits between the Bolas's horns, the hours begin and occur exactly as Bolas intended them to, much to the despair of the people of Amonkhet.
During the Hour of Revelations, the people get their answers. The Gate to the Afterlife opens and the demon Razaketh spills his blood into the river Luxa, turning it into a literal river of blood and kills everything living in the river. The Hour of Glory arrives and the first of the three corrupted Gods awaken. The Scorpion god in given one purpose by Bolas: to kill the Gods of Naktamun and it succeeds in killing Rhonas, Kefnet, and Oketra. This in turn brings utter soul crushing despair to the people as they genuinely loved their gods. Perhaps unknowingly but more likely on purpose, the poison of the Scorpion Gods unravel the spell of the Gods' minds before they die and get to fully experience they devastation they helped bring about as Bolas's pawns.
The Hour of Promise arrives and the Locust God awakens with it. The Locust God unleashes a swarm of locusts that devour the Hekma barrier and unleash all the horrors of the desert among the people. Even after training all their lives, the citizens of Naktamun are hard pressed to fight off both the devouring locust horde and the waves of undead and monsters that stream into the city. This is further compounded with the despair of seeing their gods die and their God-Pharaoh still not arriving to save them. Alas, the people soon gain a reprieve as their God-Pharaoh arrives in all his draconic glory to save them. A large host stream toward who they believed all their short lives to be their benevolent creator. Bolas looks at the thronging masses and cracks a grin before unleashing a rain of hell-fire down upon the gathered survivors.
Hazoret attempts to save her dying children from the Great Trespasser, but is back-stabbed by Bontu who proclaims Bolas as her master and God. Bolas demands she prove her loyalty by killing her sister Hazoret. Bontu defeats Hazoret and leaves her near death to present as a trophy before Bolas. Bolas rewards his faithful servant Bontu for her loyalty and ambition by blasting her with a fatal dose of magic and smugly remarking that she was more useful to him dead. He leaves Hazoret to die in agony and goes to collect what he came to this plane in the first place for.
The Hour of Eternity arrives and the Scarab God delivers to Bolas his great army. Everyone that ever died after passing the five trials have their corpses entombed in a substance called lazotep which preserve their minds and all the skills they possessed in life. This army of undead is called the Eternals and fight for the glory of their God-Pharaoh to whom they are loyal above all else. With all his plans coming to fruition, Bolas decides to test out his new army in the most efficient way he knows how. He unleashes them on the remaining survivors of Naktamun with the orders to kill every man, woman, and child still in the city. I can't put into words for how much horror this is played for so I'll just link this short story told from the point of view of the survivors. http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/hour-eternity-2017-07-12
Anyways, after all that goes down, our heroes, a band of Planewalkers called the Gatewatch, confront Bolas and try to kill him. They do not succeed. They basically go in without a plan and the entire last short story is Bolas toying with them. First, the mind-mage Jace Beleran attempts to attack Bolas's mind but he simply shatters Jace's consciousness and Jace barely planeswalks away before he suffers a death of the mind. Next, he talks the necromancer Lilliana Vess into leaving by promising her he would help unlock her old planewalker spark, and she leaves begging her friends to go with her because they stand no chance. The pyromancer Chandra Nalaar has her flames snuffed out by Bolas's sheer power and he breaks her ribs with two fingers before she gets away. The elementalist Nissa Rivane tries to work with the soul of Amonkhet and attacks Bolas with elementals, but the world sides with its true master Bolas and he defeats her by strangling her with vines until she manages to warp away. Finally, the leader and invincible soldier Gideon Jura is smacked around the entire fight by Bolas's tail before Bolas delivers a breaking speech and uses a single claw to pierce through Gideon's shield, flesh, and soul.
In the end, the Gatewatch is utterly defeated, even if the all survive, and Bolas is gets everything he wanted in the end. The Scorpion God was killed by Hazoret and some other survivors who all flee into the desert, but Bolas still has invincible undead army and two corrupted gods to serve as his powerful slaves. He begins plotting his next moves with the knowledge that nothing in the Multiverse can stand against him, and ends the story arc by flying over the city to enjoy all the devastation his plans have wrought.
So there we are. Bolas masterminded the entire arc to get a powerful army, but did it the most cruel and egotistical way he possibly could have. His entry needs some major expansion but I don't want to double his entry either. I bring this to you guys to help me condense all these atrocities into a few sentences we can add at the end of his current write up.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
Ah... Bolas just gets nastier and nastier with each passing day, huh? Definitely agreeing he needs an expansion.
Sorry I don't have too much time to mull over entries, and I'm not really familiar with the Heroes games, but Biara sounds nasty enough.![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Biara, Rodeigo and Savonarola
A total has-been.
@91102: He'd qualify in a different series, but in Jimmy Neutron, even it's vilest antagonist with the most heinous atrocities get his villainy detracted from by comedy that's Played for Laughs.
It's Saturday where I am now. Awaiting the discussion on Toffee of Septarsis soon....
edited 28th Jul '17 9:26:43 PM by ANewMan
Siiiiiiiiiiiip
To save time, and cause my memory sucks sometimes, my vote is the same as that.
Lizzid people!
edited 29th Jul '17 10:21:11 AM by AustinDR
Like reflections in the glass!
Toffee. I've seen Star Vs and I can confirm he's a nasty POS.
Wait a minute Its the 28th where I'm at. Are you sure this is the right time to be discussing him?
edited 28th Jul '17 10:10:27 PM by MorningStar1337
Lizzid people!
It's midnight where I live.
RIP Toriyama
Gonna have to say 'No' to Toffee. Just don't think he's an irredeemable, super-heinous monster.
My biggest issue with him is that alot of his crimes are pretty....implicit, rather than explicit.
Has a curtain seemingly made of skulls? It's on screen for a split second and is given no backstory or explanation to it. We don't know whose or whats skulls they are, where they come from, if they are all Toffee's victims, etc. I never saw nor heard any indication that Toffee had "killed a bunch of Mewmans."
Mind controlling Ludo into invading Mewni? Said invasion is not played near as serious or heinous as it could be, with the only thing transpiring being a couple buildings being set aflame, the people vaguely "enslaved", and Ludo 'Levatato'-ing people, which I should note is never stated to be lethal. He just makes them fly into the sky, with no real details offered beyond "They get lifted really high." Heck, people are selling merchandise while they are "enslaved," with a sizeable sequence playing the entire thing for laughs.
Toffee seemingly kills Star, then walks off in a moment of Cruel Mercy, leaving Moon and Marco alive to suffer? No evidence it was Cruel Mercy there. He seems to kill her, tries to leave, and when Moon and Marco try to kill him, he just smacks them away and says "Are you done?" in a bored tone before leaving. I personally can't say that it's Cruel Mercy without SOME form of evidence that it is. Toffee isn't showing sadism or cruelty in the scene. He just seems bored.
All in all? Toffee's onscreen crimes amount to blowing up his castle of monsters, manipulating Ludo into enslaving an army of rats, killing and/or severely injuring the Magic High Commission (Who are trying to stop him, mind), invading Mewni, and trying numerous times to kill Star and other heroes. Killing Moon's mother and any other Mewmans are completely off camera.
The other thing that makes me hesitant....Toffee is EXTREMELY enigmatic, stoic, and mysterious. His goals seem to stretch beyond just getting his finger back, but we never get sight of what this is. He's got so little dialogue in comparison to other characters and never gets a Motive Rant or anything of the like that I find it extremely hard to chalk his motives up to simply "Dude wanted his finger back." Does this make him a more threatening antagonist? Absolutely. But having so much mystery around a character doesn't lend itself too well towards being "Pure Evil."
Nasty? Yup. Worst in-story? Sure. But as is? I don't think what we explicitly get is CM-levels of heinousness, and Toffee's not elaborated upon enough. Toffee's a Knight of Cerebus who has crossed the MEH, and stands out as scary because he's so mysterious. Not a CM for me.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:17:07 PM by Ravok
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
The Unknown
The show's still in its third season btw.
No to Toffee since show's almost certainly not done with him even if he is dead. There are way too many unanswered questions concerning his backstory, his exact motives, and how he's so knowledgeable about magic. The only concise info about his motives comes from the creator, who explicitly compares him to Magneto in that he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist fighting against the Fantastic Racism found on Mewni (which is alluded to in the show but not spelled out).
It should also be noted is that he's had an Everybody Has Standards moment (not wanting to spy on Star in the bathroom in "Mewnipendence Day") and he treated Marco pretty well in "Storm the Castle" when he had no reason to (not even Pragmatic Villainy reasons because there was nothing to gain from being nice).
edited 28th Jul '17 10:22:04 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Lizzid people!
That's all an assumption; if he was well-intentioned in the past, he isn't currently.
RIP Toriyama
Basically what I was trying to say with the whole "too mysterious" bit. I just have a GUT feeling that Toffee will return in some form or another, and will get some form of character elaboration.
If he gets worse there and is given no redeeming qualities? I'll gladly vote him up. Until something like that happens though, I just don't feel right voting him up as of now.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:20:13 PM by Ravok
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Lizzid people!
I meant the latter. The latter bases his assumption on the Fantastic Racism aspect when Toffee never once hints that he is fighting for monsterkind. If anything, he has no qualms killing other monsters without batting an eye.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:22:38 PM by AustinDR
Like reflections in the glass!
I still think he might still qualify, but I do admit there are still some unanswered questions. Especially considering the following.
- His murder of Moon's mother led to Moon striking a Faustian deal with Eclipsa.
- Eclipsa herself is known for defying the Fantastic Racism a bit by having a monster as her husband. We don't know if she herself is as villainous as her reputation claims.
- With Toffee dead, and Exact Words (to be specific, there were two conditions, not one. Moon had to use the Spell and Toffee had to die. The spell does not have to kill him), the contract is fulfilled and Eclipsa is free.
With that I retract my , because I don't think the full picture is revealed yet. And also because I might had fallen into the Hate Sink = Complete Monster trap. As it stands, its possible, probable even, that Toffee might be connected to Eclipsa and is setting up a scheme to free her. In which case. I think we need to hold off until after the 3rd season at least.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:45:56 PM by MorningStar1337
The Unknown
x2 He was a general for the monster rebellion in the past. He admittedly went the Renegade Splinter Faction route during the peace treaty talks, but we don't know why he felt the need to do so.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:28:46 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Lizzid people!
And? He never shows any love for the army that he took when his commander was going to sign a peace treaty. He left out of disgust for the fact that the commander would sign a treaty with Mewni.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:29:07 PM by AustinDR
A total has-been.
I see nothing in the writing that would make me downvote Toffee, but I'm torn between voting or calling him a "Wait and see" candidate if there's any chance hell get brought back somehow.
In the present day story at least, Toffee very clearly shows he gives no craps about other monsters and is only looking out for himself. Best example is that Ludo, under his influence imprisons a bunch of monsters and puts them to slave labor. Toffee from inside the wand easily could've objected to this, but he didn't.
edited 28th Jul '17 10:38:14 PM by ANewMan
The Unknown
He should probably be a wait-and-see candidate regardless because Season 3 isn't over yet. The 2 hour special was the season premier.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Siiiiiiiiiiiip
I think he likely would qualify, but I agree to wait and see right now.
...It's weird having so many websites and no way to properly display now, lol.
It actually was bigger. But it shrunk when I uploaded it for some reason.