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
Just a reminder for the future folks, when you refer to a character as a paedophile in the Complete Monster context the tropes to cite are Paedo Hunt or Ephebophile (No Yay if it's subtext, but that is seldom appropriate to cite in a Complete Monster entry). Noting this here because some examples use lolicon which was much narrower and is now being dewicked.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI normally use Would Hurt a Child, because Paedo Hunt always seemed to me like excessive fear of pedophiles, to the point where innocent people might get accused (and damned if I'm going through all the current examples).
I'd rather use the term "child molester" myself.
A pedophile is not necessarily a child molester and a child molester is not necessarily a pedophile. I apologise for bringing semantics and politics into this, but I feel somewhat strongly about this and feel this is as good a time as any to bring it up.
Anyways, your heads up is appreciated, Septimus. Thank you for always looking out for us.
New EP as well....
The setting? Vampire: The Masquerade was a long-running tabletop game from White Wolf. The supernatural exists. Namely? Vampires. There are a multitude of vampire 'clans', descended by blood from Cain, the first vampire. There are several independent clans and some have formed coalitions into bodies of governments ...one enforces The Masquerade to keep the mortal world staunchly ignorant. The big problem, as few are willing to acknowledge is eventually the founders of the Clans, the Antediluvians, will wake up and then it's The End of the World as We Know It...the EP today will focus on one clan founder...
Who Is He?
Augustus Giovanni, founder of the rather despised Giovanni clan. Some backstory: Born in 945, Giovanni was a ruthless, talented merchant who came to the attention of the Antediluvian Cappadocius, founder of the Cappadocian clan. Cappadocius sired Augustus despite the warnings of his other progeny. Turns out they were right...
Initiating a massive conspiracy called The Conspiracy of Isaac, Augustus used his son and Childe Claudius to ally with another clan and cause a massive amount of chaos and bloodshed to get Augustus close enough to Cappadocius. As a result? Augustus committed what is called Diablerie: draining another vampire to death. This has the benefit of giving you the older vampire's powers, making Augustus something of an Antediluvian himself. With his newfound power, Augustus set about ruthlessly annihilating the Cappadocians, committing a genocide on the clan to replace them with the Giovanni.
Now, Augustus decided to keep his bloodline strictly in the family. Embracing a chosen few into vampirism he kept the rest human. Crafting the Giovanni into a wealthy crime family, Augustus imposed strict rules for who could be brought over to vampirism, while turning them into a necromantic death cult at the same time who conducted hideous rituals on the dead, enslaved the souls of wraiths and also practiced incest to keep the bloodline pure enough. Fast forward centuries as Augustus reigns over his little kingdom. Oh, and remember Claudius? Augustus killed him in a fit of pique during a You Have Failed Me moment. As for his plans, Augustus intends nothing less than godhood using a ritual called Apotheosis.. Using a series of rituals, Augustus binds the souls of the dead, enslaving them so he can destroy the Shroud, the barrier between the living and the dead, which would result in the mortal world devastated by the dead. Augustus? Would then enslave the souls of the dead and harness them to propel himself to godhood.
This fails miserably in the end, when the Final Nights and the end of the world begin, Augustus frantically attempts to regain the power he had, and depending on the scenario? is wiped out by the player characters or the Antediluvians themselves, reduced to the Big Bad Wannabe he truly is with the ignominious end he deserves.
Mitigating Qualities?
None. No care for his family, clan or anything but himself.
Heinousness?
Well...VTM is dark. REALLY dark. There's the Antediluvians who will mostly wipe out their wayward kids and destroy the world, there's the Sabbat-a group that believes subtlety is a bad word and consists partially of a clan of extreme torturers and flesh-crafters, the Camarilla are an elitist groups of tyrants and there's a variety of nastiness all across the Supernatural world. Augustus, though...diablerie is hardly unique, but it's a very nasty crime, and he also wiped out the Cappadocians...couple to making his family into a cannibalistic, incestuous group of backstabbing necromancers with all sorts of vileness and his grandiose plans for the Shroud and the world...I think being a relatively weak pathetic sack of skin works in his favor as he manages so much despite being so worthless.
Conclusion?
I lean yea. Leave it to the thread.
Eh, I don't know the universe too well, but I'll give a
Augustus (he DOES plot to not just kill everyone, but enslave their souls; I'm assuming this is presented as And I Must Scream).
For Augustus Giovanni...
I think a big thing to establish up front is that Sascha Vykos and Augustus Giovanni are on vastly different levels. Mechanics-wise, it doesn't necessarily seem as such - they're only separated by two dots (if I'm remembering the character sheets correctly; it might only be one) of generation, and Vykos is already extremely capable of superhuman feats and global-scale effects due to both sheer physical/supernatural power as well as political influence within the Sabbat.
That said, the game makes it very explicit that hitting 3rd generation, as Augustus did via consuming (well, most of) the soul of Cappadocius, has put Augustus on a universal threat level (Vykos could only dream of being able to do things on the level of "rewrite the laws of existence such that the realms of the living and the dead have no barrier"). To put things in perspective of Marvel Comics, Giovanni would be comparable in scale to Thanos, while Vykos would be comparable in scale to Dr. Doom.
So, that said, to "Uncle Auggie," as he is occasionally nicknamed in-game...
It's worth noting that Claudius is the only one specifically named in the lore that Augustus kills personally for You Have Failed Me, but he has put into play that general idea for the whole family, so he clearly is only using his family and the manufactured loyalty to support himself, and he has no illusions of actually caring for them.
The challenge is to gauge his crimes against those that the other Antediluvians have done, and why he's done them. The clearest two cases (due to most Antediluvians being left mostly undefined to give the game master more room to tell their stories) are to compare Augustus to Tremere (who similarly usurped a clan and are infamous even among vamps for being dirty backstabbers too) and his sire, Cappadocius (who also had dreams of apotheosis... though in his case, he wanted to do it via drinking God's soul; nobody is even sure if that was possible or if Cappadocius was as mad as Malkav).
First, a comparison to Tremere. The two are often treated as mirrors of each other - magicians in life (though the specifics of what type in game terms are a bit different) who then stole unlife from vampires, committed attempted genocide on another clan (both were revealed to have failed, but the Giovanni's failure wasn't as obvious for a long time), and who were building up resources to basically rule all of mankind. The difference between the two is just how far they'd go. Tremere's actions were to basically be the top Antediluvian by the end, and control humanity via learning its True Name (which it found via the nefarious... Human Genome Project. Go fig.). Tremere more or less just wants the status quo, for better or worse in a Crapsack World. Augustus' actions were to enslave literally millions of souls, with the final number being strived for at 150 million souls (split into various groups). Tremere's methods were much less brutal and callous, so Augustus clearly is the one overshadowing all others.
Now, for comparing Augustus to Cappadocius, it's time to not just examine what the two were doing, but why. Both were shooting to lead a clan of death-obsessed vampires so that they could achieve godhood. That said, Cappadocius was rather infamous for being fairly merciful so far as vamps go - he even had a bunch of his clan locked up with no escape (the "Feast of Folly") because they were indiscriminately feasting on humanity and not advancing learning in any way. It's strongly suggested that Cappadocius' aims in gathering learning and hoping to replace God were a (probably misplaced) hope to just do a better job at running all of creation. There's a reason that spreading learning was a main goal of Clan Cappadocian (as it was known when Cappadocius was in charge) - he wanted to improve the lot of mankind (there's several suggestions that he meant that in a Well-Intentioned Extremist fashion, but still). Meanwhile, Augustus just wants to have as much power and money as possible. He wants everything subjugated to himself, ruling two worlds with an absolute iron fist. There is no motive even remotely altruistic for Augustus - he totally runs with It's All About Me.
So, for those reasons, I vote keep.
edited 8th Aug '17 11:01:27 AM by 32_Footsteps
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
for Augustus Giovanni. Both OP and 32_footsteps made some very convincing arguments for him.
Alright here comes another fan-made MLP character for the CM category.
Who's the candidate?
Shine Bright, apprentice of Twilight Sparkle from the comic Time Fades
.
What's the comic about?
On his deathbed an old Spike is reminiscing about his life and his friends. The story is told in flashbacks, showing what happened to each of the Mane Six after the show up until their deaths. It's mostly a bittersweet story but there are also some surprisingly dark moments that involve murders, wars and a plague. A stark contrast to the cutesy art style of the comic.
What has Shine Bright done?
Shine Bright was a Unicorn orphan with an incredible talent in magic. Princess Twilight took her under her wing and became her mentor. Over time Bright became part of the family and even developed a crush on Twilight’s son Arcane. Arcane, however, was gay and had a boyfriend. To solve this problem Shine Bright secretly spiked his drinks with love potions until he fell in love with her and continued to do so even after they became a couple.
Her end goal, however, was to rule Equestria. Since Celestia and Luna had already been assassinated a long time ago, Twilight was the only pony left between her and the throne. So one day when Twilight was visiting the graves of her friends, Shine Bright used Starlight’s Cutie Mark Removal spell on her, while Arcane killed the weakened princess. They then told the public that Princess Twilight had been assassinated by a mercenary, despite their best efforts to protect her. Arcane was crowned as new ruler and soon afterward he and Shine Bright got married. With Arcane under her control Shine Bright was now the undisputed ruler of Equestria.
Unfortunately for her, Spike’s daughter just happened to visit her mother’s grave at the same day and witnessed Twilight’s murder. She told Spike about it, but Shine Bright kept both under surveillance, already presuming them as a treat to her rule. So Spike and his daughter had to fake their deaths to escape to the dragon lands. Before they left, they also made public what really happened to Twilight. This split the nation in half: Some believing Spike, other’s Shine Bright. Shine Bright herself responded by silencing the opposition, even going as far as hanging them as pictures shows.
Eventually a war broke out in which the Crystal Empires, the Dragons and the Changelings (who had become allies of Equestria) conquered Canterlot with Spike himself killing a cornered Shine Bright who was begging for mercy. With both Cadence and Arcane killed in battle, Flurry Hearts became the new ruler of Equestria and peace was finally restored.
Militating Factors?
At one point Spike is speculating whether her feelings for Arcane were genuine or if she only saw him as an useful pawn. The comic never confirms which is true. However, she was perfectly willing to use drugs to change his sexual orientation and make him fall in love with her. So even if she truly loved him, she never cared about him as person and only wanted to "claim" him.
Heinous Standards?
Earlier in the comic Queen Chrysalis makes a short appearance, when she has both Luna and Celestia assassinated and attacks Equestria with her Changeling army. On the one hand this is not so different to the things Shine Bright did. Yet on the other hand Chrysalis did this to her enemies while Shine Bright drugged the son of her own mentor, who saw her as part of the family, and had him help her murder his own mother. In my own personal opinion that makes Shine Bright’s actions far worse than Chrysalis’.
My Verdict
My knowledge on VTM is limited almost exclusively to a certain amazing video game and a few Clans from the tabletop game, but I think Augustus is a pretty solid keep.
Shine Bright... I have my doubts. First, none of that sounds like it could theoretically happen in the show, which is what matters for fanworks. Two, it doesn't sound like she actually does that much, failing the standard. Drugging someone and taking over a kingdom and hanging some people and killing someone is bad, yes, but not CM material. Three, MLP fan work. I'm definetly leaning no here.
edited 8th Aug '17 12:08:29 PM by MahStache
Just allow me to point out that the My Little Pony Fan Work has its own CM page. The first entry on that page is about a guy who wants to commit genocide and kills a child. The third entry on the page is an Eldritch Abomination devouring entry planets. And these aren't even the worst characters.
Obviously mone of this would ever happen in the show So either there’s no rule against such characters or that page is in serious need of a rewrite. .
Lighty, since you've brought up the Antediluvians, I have a question for you. Do you think Tzimisce himself counts based on his actions in the Crucible of God scenario? He devours the entire population of New York City and hijacks Tremere's above mentioned ritual to try to absorb all life on Earth. That seems like it matches what Giovanni was tryintrying to do in heinous level and depravity.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.

@91897 If you're not proposing him, why bother to bring him up?
Also, nobody cited "singing a song" as the reason that he's being Played for Laughs. The fact that pretty much every single appearance he makes is either to set up a joke or to bring a joke home is the reason that he's Played for Laughs.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.