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
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I mean, it's not really a waste to be thorough regarding potential mitigating factors in an effortpost. That's the whole point. Even if they don't have an effect on the outcome it's useful to give all the information. Some people may have a different opinion and think it is actually relevant.
edited 13th Aug '17 11:15:50 AM by TommyFresh
@hopeshalllive: .....I don't think "trimming" the thread is possible. :/ Unless a sub-thread is made(?), and I'm not sure how or if that works.
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.It might be possible. We could have Lightysnake and Madragurauaua become Complete Monster Archivers. That could be one way to shorten the thread. Put the previous candidates from all the previous years into a archive. And in that archive are specific links to discussions of candidates and whether or not they were approved or rejected.
If we created a new thread and cut this one, then we are practically asking for trouble. They said they had a nightmare without an organized way of discussing CM's and this thread did that job. What I'm focusing on is the length of the thread and the problems that is causing. You cant go a few weeks on the thread without it crashing. That is why I brought up the idea of archives.
I've never seen this thread crash before, and I check it almost everyday.
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Maybe it's the device you're viewing the site on?
Also
Professor Bucky-Wise.
And in the writeup, what's this about "Isabel" (actually Biara I'm assuming) negotiating a peace? That seems it disqualify her from counting (unless it's Pragmatic Villainy).
- Dandy Mott is a spoiled heir who exhibited signs of sociopathy even in childhood, and is heavily implied to have caused another boy's disappearance. As an adult, he has become bored with his lavish lifestyle. This is alleviated when he meets Twisty, a Serial Killer who has kidnapped several young children, whom Dandy is shown gleefully tormenting psychologically.note Dandy later becomes a killer himself, after being introduced to "the sweet language of murder." Two of his many victims are another childhood friend and his own mother, the latter of whom he turns into a giant Dead Woman Puppet after bathing in her blood. While he asserts that he identifies with the freaks, he talks down to them and uses the term "freak" to insult them, even after correcting his Dragon for doing the same thing. After they get fed up with his mistreatment, they walk out on their contracts, so Dandy calmly strolls around their campgrounds and shoots them dead as he sees them. Despite his claims of being in love with the Tattler twins, he treats them like possessions rather than human beings, and it's quite obvious that whatever "love" he feels for them is purely narcissistic. Though he presents himself as a cultured aristocrat, Dandy is ultimately just an overgrown child who never quite grew out of the mentality that everyone and everything exists solely to entertain him and bend to his will.
- Fairy Tail:
- Phantom Lord Arc: Master Jose Porla, the Big Bad of this arc, has a bad case of envy towards Fairy Tail for its sudden rise in power and wealth due to Lucy—which neither she nor the guild had intention of using. Thus drove him to use Gajeel to destroy the guild hall. Makarov, Fairy Tail's master, wasn't prepared to retaliate, until Jose later hung up Team Shadow Gear as an example after having them viciously beaten. This earns Makarov's wrath, and when the two encounter each other, Jose being an illusion, he shows no ill will and says some small talk to further enrage his rival, enough for his minion to drain him of all his magical power temporarily. He then proceeds toward the next stage of his plan—kidnapping Lucy and using her ransom to siphon away the Heartfilia family fortune, rather than returning her as her father had hoped. After Lucy angers him when he kidnaps her, Jose's first step is to have his guild robot destroy a town, and then he proceeds to defeat and torture Erza. He also attempts to use his magic cannon to annihilate Fairy Tail and their guild hall. This is all because Makarov said, while drunk at an annual guild meeting, that his guild was better.
- Tartaros Arc: Jackal, one of Zeref's demons and a member of Tartaros's Nine Demon Gates, is a psychopath who gleefully assassinated the Magic Council in front of Doranbalt. He then goes on to force not one, but two sadistic choices on a former Magic Council member and Lucy, forcing them to choose between their own life and their granddaughter's life, and the life of the Magic Councilor and a pregnant woman respectively, and says that his only real motivation for doing so is that he see humans as playthings. He then later kills one of his own guildmates right in front of Lucy for the crime of annoying him. Out of all of the Etherious, he could very well be the one most deserving of being called a demon.
- Acnologia, the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse, was once a hero who protected humans from dragons. Succumbing to bloodlust and a love of combat and destruction, Acnologia embraced his transformation into a black dragon, massacring the entire dragon race, even his own allies. Becoming a terrifying scourge on the world, Acnologia annihilates innocents for fun, stopped only from conquering the world by his own boredom. Upon his second appearance in the story, Acnologia brutally kills his old enemy, the Fire Dragon King Igneel in front of the latter's adopted son. When he decides to take center stage in the Invasion of Alvarez, Acnologia targets the other Dragon Slayers to wipe them out and reveals his intention to simply annihilate everything that lives, while keeping the only immortal wizards as playthings to torture forever. Even worse, Acnologia was originally motivated by losing his family to dragons, but became one himself; despite this, he has no plans to commit suicide, thus ensuring there will always be at least one dragon left—himself.
- InSEXts, by Marguerite Bennett et al.: The Hag is an ancient monster who savors human suffering more than anything. In Victorian times, the Hag contracts with Lalita "Lady" Bertram's cruel husband to help her run a brothel where women are forced into slavery so the Hag can preside over their pain. Murdering women and girls on the streets of London, the Hag also frequently commands her slaves to hurt each other while having sex for her amusement. When heroines Lady and her lover Mariah manage to track the Hag down, she dominates the mind of Lady's former sister-in-law to have her kill Lady's infant son and announces her intention to massacre everyone in the brothel to escape, before trying to Mind Rape Lady and her friends with visions of their worst fear. Flashbacks demonstrate that the Hag has been murdering and torturing for a long time, having chosen of her own volition to become a monster long ago.
- Among the Nazi Übers themselves, Markus "Siegfried" Jung is the worst—and, as one of only 3 ultra-powerful battleships, one of the most powerful. A sadistic psychopath fully devoted to the Nazi regime, Markus, while a child, once murdered a Jewish man for fun, growing up into a savage war criminal who targets civilians in his attacks. When the Red Army is defeated at Berlin, Markus executes thousands upon thousands of prisoners before resuming his place on the front lines where he leads his men to more war crimes. Markus initially spearheads the invasion into America, attacking Washington, D.C. by annihilating the White House and recrafting it into a gigantic swastika. Markus proceeds to lay waste to all in his path in America, killing soldiers and civilians alike. Vile enough that even when dying agonizingly, his fellow Über Siegmund coldly leaves him to his fate, Markus misses no chance to show why he is Hitler's favorite soldier.
- The Exterminators of the Year 3000: Crazy Bull is a bandit leader in a post-apocalyptic world where water is a precious commodity. Leading his gang, the Exterminators, across the wastes, Bull massacres anybody he sees trying to find a certain storage of water, including killing the father of Tommy, a young boy trying to find the storage area. After slaughtering a group of scavengers Tommy stowed away with, Bull interrogates the leader of the party, killing him when he refuses to divulge the water's location. He later encounters Alien, who stole his prized car, and Tommy, who happened to meet up with his nemesis. Alien cons his way out of the situation, and Bull decides to halve Tommy by tying him to motorcycles, with the lad only surviving because he's a Cyborg. At the climax of the film, it's revealed that all the massacres were to cover up the fact that Bull controls the water plant, hoarding more water than he and his gang could ever need. After he's killed, his gang initiate a plan to blow up the water so nobody else can get it.
- The Nightmare Never Ends (1980) note : Olivier, a demonic Man of Wealth and Taste—heavily implied to be the demon Moloch—and leader of a Satanic cult, has been involved in many wars over the centuries. He's introduced interrupting a Nazi dinner party to inform a man that he hasn't met his quota with Hitler for three weeks before gunning down the women onstage. He kills the alleged clairvoyant who showed Claire Hansen the vision of him in Nazi Germany. Weiss, a survivor of The Holocaust who lost his family to Olivier, attempts to hunt him down when he finds out that he sees him on TV, only for Olivier to brutally murder him. Olivier then rapes a girl, Annie, in his club and kills her boyfriend when he goes looking for him. He then sets his sights on the Claire's husband, Nobel Prize-winning atheist author, James Hansen, who just released a book entitled God Is Dead. He forces James into a meeting and attempts to recruit him to his cult, and melts his face when he refuses. When Lieutenant Sterne investigates him, Olivier kills his partner by filling his car with smoke and causing it to blow up when Sterne gets near. Then he goes after Claire, who's been tasked to kill him and remove his heart. She—along with Annie—captures him and tries to cut his heart out on an operating table, but Claire discovers that she killed Annie in his place, and Olivier murders her.
- The Dark Eye: Rhazzazor was an ancient dragon who sold his soul to Thargunitoth, the Archdemoness of the Undead, and became a powerful undead monstrosity. He would eventually become the despotic ruler of a small nation, demanding monthly human sacrifices to maintain his unholy existence. When Emer, the ruler of the Middle Realm, not only dared to challenge him but also managed to injure him, he condemned her to a Fate Worse than Death by turning her into a living seal for an Eldritch Abomination, driving her almost insane. Eventually he planned to steal the life essences of thousands of people to give himself a new body, offering their souls to Thargunitoth in exchange for his own. When a group of heroes stopped the dark ritual that would’ve allowed Thargunitoth to claim these souls, Rhazzazor still continued with the plan, hoping that the sheer life essences of all those soul would give him enough strength to simply break the pact and reclaim his soul. Overall Rhazzazor was sadistic and cruel being, willing to condemn thousands of innocent souls to a Fate Worse than Death so that he could continue his existence.
- Laszlo, mainly from Hammers of Fate, is the new commander of the troops of the Griffin Empire appointed by Biara disguised as Isabel. When first introduced, he demands the rebel leaders surrender, and when one of the peasants informs him that the peasants are supporting the rebels and their Elven allies, Laszlo burns him and his entire village alive. Laszlo then tortures an old war comrade to get Prince Andrei's location, and is envious and disgusted that Freyda will be commander, as he sees her as not understanding his version of war. When Freyda goes to negotiate with the dwarves for Andrei's return, Laszlo attacks the dwarves in the hope that the dwarves will kill Freyda, and also simply to fulfill his bloodlust, only stopping when Biara-as-Isabel negotiates a peace. When Laszlo discovers Freyda has rebelled, he orders Godric to be executed while he engages the rebel leaders in battle. A sadistic Blood Knight, Laszlo shows that even a knight of the Griffin Empire can be a complete and remorseless sociopath.
- Dr. Harlan Fontaine is one of the masterminds, alongside real estate tycoon Leland Monroe, behind the plans of the Suburban Redevelopment Fund, a scheme to con money off of the city in an elaborate insurance scam. To put the plans into action, he manipulates Ira Hogeboom, a traumatized patient, into burning down the house of people who wouldn't sell the land, and his only objection to families being killed was that it drew bad publicity. When Hogeboom becomes hard to control, he decides to have a hit put out on him. He is willing to personally kill anyone who discovers his dirty secrets, even the ones who trust him, such as Courtney Sheldon, who he mentored and had sell morphine as a drug dealer; and attempts to kill Cole Phelps's love interest, Elsa Litchmann, as she was about to piece it together. Never breaking his friendly demeanor, Fontaine is a sociopath who even Monroe calls a cold character.
- Watch_Dogs: Dermot "Lucky" Quinn is the leader of the Chicago South Club, a syndicate involved in human trafficking, drug dealing, and cybercrime; and is one of the main villains along with Damian Brenks. Before the game begins, Lucky manipulates Rose Washington and Mayor Donovan Rushmore into an affair, then manipulates the Mayor into killing Rose so he can blackmail him later for more power. In the process of obtaining this blackmail material, he kills Lena Pearce. Lucky also has no tolerance for failure. He kidnaps Maurice's wife and sells her as a sex slave at a human trafficking auction after Maurice fails to kill Aiden, and kills a fugitive Aiden delivers after an operation goes south. Lucky later orders his men to kill Clara Lille when he's made aware of her working against him. As he lays dying, he declares that Chicago will build a statue of him while never knowing his true criminal nature, thanks Mayor Donovan for being "stupid enough to fall in love", and states that vigilantes like Aiden will be forgotten because they don't matter.
- The Tale of Despereaux: In The Film of the Book, Boticelli Remorso is the cruel leader of the lower rat world. Believing the only true meaning of life is other people's suffering, he forces innocent mice, such as the protagonist, Despereaux, into incredibly one-sided gladiator-like games in a Colosseum, pitting them against a gigantic (to them) cat where the only outcome is being eaten and dying in front of a crowd of bloodthirsty rats. He despises Princess Pea for no apparent reason, and as such orders his hundreds of rats to eat her, trample her and cause her great pain. A detail throughout the movie that adds to Boticelli's status as a monster is the skulls and bones littered throughout Ratworld; it is made clear this is his and his subordinate's doing. Throughout all of these events, Boticelli is happy with it, because, as mentioned, he loves other people's suffering.
edited 14th Aug '17 8:23:18 AM by ACW
I think my next project will be going through the Well-Intentioned Extremist wicks and correcting them to Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist.
Everyone okay with this
for the Never Again list?
edited 13th Aug '17 2:32:29 PM by ACW
That is decent enough to express why Aku is definitely not a CM and why he shouldn't be discussed anymore, so I'd give it a pass. Not to mention that "never again" list has so few examples and Aku is one of the candidates that should definitely be added there.
edited 13th Aug '17 2:38:42 PM by Kookosbanaani
Yeah Biara negotiating a peace was Pragmatic Villainy, as it gave her a chance to frame the rebellion's killing of the Dwarvern king as an attack by fanatics who want to enslave the Dwarves.
Also ACW, Laszlo's little blue link should be either General Ripper or Sociopathic Soldier since there is no admiral in Heroes V.
edited 13th Aug '17 2:40:40 PM by hopeshalllive
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I think Insane Admiral just refers to top-level officers, while a General Ripper is obsessed with a specific enemy. I asked in Ask The Tropers to be sure. That may be my project after the WIE stuff.
edited 13th Aug '17 2:57:16 PM by ACW
I'm with having Aku being posted on the Never Again List.
What about the likes of Father, Ganondorf, and Douche Being on that list?
My sandbox of EPs and other stuffThe are a bunch of series with a character named "Father" but if the one is from FMA doesn't qualify because Spoiler: He gets an Alas, Poor Villain death scene.
Father from KND too many redeemable qualities and suffered from a pretty serious case of Villain Decay.
Both haven't been discussed enough to be put on the never again list anyway.
edited 13th Aug '17 3:27:07 PM by DocJamore
As for Kids Next Door!Father (and Grandfather), it seems they both have loved ones.

Also I think we need to have a discussion about the length of this thread. Literally if you try to go back just to see discussions of a few weeks, the thread starts crashing on you. So I think we need to discuss whether or not we need to trim the thread down a bit.