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
Might I add something else to Sam's writeup?
"Sam only used his supposed patriotism as an excuse to exercise his violent urges and filled his nephew's head with lies about what he claims is "the American way"."
That might work. Any captions? I also have a possibility for Saddler (a collage of this
scene).
I'm using Wesker's quote instead.
edited 3rd Aug '17 3:35:29 PM by ACW
It just passed midnight where I am (6 minutes ago, infact) and Splatoon 2 has been two weeks since release, August 4th my time right now. We've got something interesting here, read this.
So in the Salmon Run mode, right, it initially seems like you're killing innocent salmon and taking their babies, right? Like a cruel zombies mode? WRONG. It is revealed in the lore of the game, brought to you through scrolls and images, that, in Inkling old ages, Salmonids destroyed and raided several Inkling civilizations, leaving no survivors. Salmon Run, the mode where you fight several waves of Salmonids, is the process of this. They are treated as the harbringers of the apocalypse in Inkling lore, and it's hinted they started the human apoclaypse 10,000 years ago causing the sea level to rise. Yeesh.
Along with that, Salmonids are intelligent, and are mentioned to have made arms deals with the Octarians as well as having their own battle classes, with commanders, and are intelligent enough to not be chaotic evil. The one big issue here, though? They have no leader.
Yep, this heinous bar clearing race of monsters who wipe civilizations have no commander. If they did, they would EASILY count, but as it stands, groups can't count. We should DEFINETLY wait and see for updates, or anotger game, as there's a lot potential here. No individual Salmonid is given dialogue but the lore gives them personality and fleshes them out. I just wish they had a discernible leader.
Notably, nobody else counts: the Big Bad of story mode fails the heinous standard (commits grand larceny and brainwashing, and that's it) and arguably has good intentions, as well as being not at all taken seriously at a lot of points.
I'm cool with Brian Irons image. Who knew the Corrupted chief of police would be worse than the scientist who started the Racoon City outbreak
Still waiting for Not A Hero DLC featuring Chris Redfield and possible future candidate Lucas Baker
Alright, all, I've got another candidate today. Thanks to Ravok for helping me with this one, let's get to the chase...
What's the setting?
Spider Robinson, the excellent writer behind the Stardance books and others like Telempath and Mind Killer, wrote Very Bad Deaths in 2006. The basic plot follows Russel Walker, a depressed journalist for a Canadian newspaper in BC. An old friend of his suddenly comes to his door one day, a reclusive, incredibly antisocial man named Zandor — or "Smelly" — who happens to be a telepath who can't turn off his powers (think Kotoura-san) and isolates himself from other people to stay away from their thoughts. However, when a plane flies over Heron Island over Zandor's residence and just avoids crashing, Zandor accidentally reads the mind of the pilot... a man so evil, so hideously depraved, so horribly sadistic and unclean, that it sends Zandor reeling to his old friend in desperation. The man? Has a target. His time? A week. Our killer's name?
Allen.
Who is Allen? What has he done?
The Picasso of Pain. The Aristotle of Agony. A true, real-life, evil genius. Described by the book as a man who makes Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer look tame, a walking cartoon monster too implausibly evil for words, there really is only one word to describe Allen: a hyper-sadist. In the same way that my previous candidate Neil Cassidy is the master of Mind Rape, Allen is the master of torture: an enigmatic technophile who considers himself a scientist devoted to the study of pain. To this end, Allen maims, rapes, and tortures people to death in the most horrid, grisly ways one can imagine... some of his tamer endeavors? Involve buying off crates of gas masks and tying them to his victims before setting them aflame, dying from the flame instead of the smoke and feeling themselves cook alive. A man capable of reducing a man to breaking a man within mere minutes, Allen specializes in inducing all sorts of agony; physical, mental, philosophical, you name it. Allen even specializes in making drugs for these sorts of things; drugs that slow perception of time, drugs that keep his victims from passing out from pain, drugs that promote panic and terror, and his specialty? A toxin that makes pain hurt even more than it does normally, to the point where a simple, light slap in the face that hurt worse than getting scorched by the surface of the sun when pumped up with them.
All that's just where Allen begins; for years, Allen has been meticulously tortured his way through life, trying his best to keep his victims alive for as long as he can (his record? Twenty-two days on end) before they finally die. Allen has claimed at least around one-hundred-and-fifty victims in his spree — although by his admission, Allen has watched hundreds upon hundreds of people beg for their lives before him — and isn't stopping any time soon. Now, when Allen nearly crashes his plane above Zandor? Allen spends what he thinks are his last moments taunting God into "scaring him into believing him again," gloating that if he had the time, he would have racked up a thousand more victims. Of course, Allen survives... and that's when Zandor learns of Allen's next intended targets, his "masterpiece" of sorts.
Allen intends to attack a family of four next, consisting of a happy married couple and two adorable young children. Allen's plan? Strip them all naked, tie them up, drive them out, and then spend days at a time putting them through horrible bouts of rape and torture of the absolute worst kinds, putting each member of the family through two days each of his specialties — the father first, then each child — before going to the mother. Allen doesn't plan to kill her... he simply intends to render her quadriplegic and aphasic, permanently paralyzed, then pin the deaths of the family as a simple road accident — the wife surviving and ending up in her current condition — and sending her off to some institution somewhere. For years on end, Allen plans to visit her regularly so she'll never forget what he's done, all while she's completely and utterly helpless to point him out as the culprit or do anything about it.
So, in the race to stop this douchebag of epic proportions... Russel and Zandor race to pinpoint Allen before he can reach the family, teaming up with a cop named Nika and wrestling with what exactly they're going to do with the freak when they catch him. Unfortunately, Allen manages to catch onto them pretty fast and stalks them at every turn. Russel, one night? Is cornered by Allen in his own home. What follows is Allen tying down Russel and a confrontation between the two (Allen's revealed here as looking like a fat nerd, sort of like Comic Book Guy with weirdly reptilian eyes — not exactly the description you were thinking of, huh?) as Allen dissects Russel's entire plot and decides to torture him to death the usual way, casually remarking that if he simply tried to torture him to get information out of him (specifically why Russel was after him), Russel would be utterly broken as a person way too early — and that would be no fun at all to Allen. Allen also notes that Russel's "girlfriend" — Nika — especially interests him.
Allen pumps Russell full of the drugs that amplify his pain, testing out their effects by straightening a paperclip and then ramming it up his nail — the pain being described as equatable to a hypernova — and casually notes what pliers might feel like next. Through the whole torture, Russell comes to a new revelation that Allen may end up finding out about Zandor and immediately pieces together that Allen would use Zandor as his new pet; dragging him along for each torture session and forcing Zandor to experience the thoughts of the people he tortures for the rest of his life, never killing him but "loving" him in the perverse way only Allen can.
The night goes on. Russell remarks that he's just figured out something that'd make Allen extremely happy. Russell finally ends up blurting out that he found about Allen through Zandor — although he only says he was a telepath, and the prospect of such makes Allen wickedly gleeful as Russell thought. After a while longer? Allen gets impatient while fishing for the information about Nika and gives Russell a deal. if he tells Allen Nika's name, Allen will simply kill her and get it over with. If he doesn't? Allen will track her down and use her as his new masterpiece... planning to extend her death for up to an entire month and smugly remarking to Russell she looked especially durable and tough.
Zandor finally manages to reach Allen and when Allen goes out to confront him, Russell breaks out and the final confrontation ensues. Allen puts two-and-two together and realizes Zandor's the telepath — Allen's thoughts are so toxic and monstrous it causes Zandor ungodly agony just reading his thoughts alone — and exploits this by sending out horrible images to Zandor, mind-raping him in the process. Happy as can be, Allen tells Russell he'll give him the absolute worst death he's ever given anyone, and finally reveals he intends to just keep on torturing and murdering people for as long as he can until he finally gets enough material to compose a book on the subject — called Very Bad Deaths. Allen's desire is to live through infamy, remarking that he hopes one day five-hundred years in the future from now, his name will be told to little children and they'll squirm in terror. Fortunately for everyone, Zandor finally recuperates and puts his telepathic powers to good use. Through an immense amount of effort on his part, Zandor launches a fatal psychic attack on Allen (making his "selves disbelieve in himself" as he puts it) and Allen finally dies from the shock of it, ending his spree for good.
Any mitigating factors?
...oh, man, is that a joke?
Allen is one of the most thoroughly wicked, irredeemable pigshits I've ever read in literature. Not one word is devoted to giving him anything even remotely resembling an altruistic quality. Not one solitary word details him as anything else than among the worst human beings to ever walk on the face of the Earth, a "one-in-a-billion freak" more unabashedly twisted than evil fictional serial killers like Hannibal Lecter. Allen cheerfully admits his childhood was as boring as could be and simply boils his reasons for killing down to this: while people like Russell would save a family from a burning house and feel good about it, the kind of thing that would bring Allen pleasure is taking the parents out, forcing them to watch their daughter burn alive, then chucking the father back into the flames and dragging the mother out to torture her to death. It's impulse, to Allen; he's a sociopath and enjoys every bit of it. Everything he does it out of twisted curiosity or simple amusement, as he admits.
So, uh... pass.
Conclusion?
One of the most shamelessly, enjoyably depraved characters I've read in a book in a long, long time. Keep him, absolutely.
Thoughts?
edited 3rd Aug '17 9:25:25 PM by Scraggle


Yes.