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
Interesting..........And one more thing, I thought Randall Flagg was a one-man army (This is a consequence if I didn't read Stephen King novels)...........So he is a dragon. If so, Which kind of the big bad that he works for?
"Making screw-ups and mistakes was I ever really good at. Because everything I touch went to hell."From all I've read, Crimson King seems like an ULTIMATE Anti-Climax Boss (Flagg's death in the series also seems anti-climactic; that seems like one thing the film did better).
edited 23rd Aug '17 6:54:20 AM by ACW
Since we're talking about Randall Flagg/Walter Paddick, I noticed his The Dark Tower entry is currently listed only under Film A to E. Shouldn't the entry also be added under the Stephen King page since all his works are in a shared multiverse?
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.I think the book differs from the film. Lighty, what say you?
P.S. Scraggle, thanks for that change for Dawn!Guruda. That's much better than what I had.
edited 23rd Aug '17 7:44:29 AM by ACW
Found some more unapproved edits, this time on the Characters subpage. PM'd both tropers about it and deleted both entries. First, we had an entry for Scourge the Hedgehog on Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog - Other Antagonists.
- Complete Monster: Not surprising, considering that he's Sonic's evil twin. Not only is he selfish, violent, arrogant and sadistic, he's also a tyrant and he may or may not have murdered his own father. He also ruled his entire world with an iron fist and he threatened to destroy it along with Sonic's just because he can.
Second, there was Zero Context Example for both the Red Skull and the Grim Reaper under The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! – HYDRA. While Red Skull was approved, Grim Reaper was not.
edited 23rd Aug '17 7:23:08 AM by chasemaddigan
So yesterday I had the treat to watch Blood and Black Lace, a 1964 Italian horror movie that many consider one of the granddaddies of the entire slasher genre. It concerns a group of lovely young models for an Italian fashion agency being stalked and murdered by a mysterious faceless (think The Question and you have a good idea of what he looks like) killer for equally mysterious reasons. He's quite monstrous, so I thought I might propose him and see what you guys think. The film does a pretty good job of keeping everyone equally suspicious until the big reveal, and while it's a mystery I won't be using spoiler tags because the movie's fifty years old. So proceed with caution if you want to see this movie!
Who is Massimo Mariano? What has he done?
Massimo Mariano (anglicized as Max Marian in some translations, though not the one I saw), played by Cameron Mitchell, is the co-owner of the modeling agency, and secretly a greedy, calculating sociopath. His partner in the business is Contessa Cristina Como, a wealthy noblewoman who was recently widowed in a car accident. Unbeknownst to the world at large, the two are lovers, and the car crash was no accident - it was deliberate sabotage by Massimo.
We first see Massimo as the killer in the opening scene, wherein he gruesomely garrotes Isabella, one of the agency's models, to death; he dumps her body in the modeling agency's headquarters where Cristina finds it to her seeming horror. As the agency's employees and the police go through Isabella's things, they discover she kept a diary, our story's MacGuffin; another model, Nicole, volunteers to watch over it. However, she then gets a call from a man purporting to be her boyfriend Franco, an antiques dealer; he says he's very sick and would like for her to visit him. While she's thus distracted, someone steals the diary.
Nicole arrives at the antiques shop to find it completely dark. She's naturally set upon by the killer, and after a dense chase sequence is brutally dispatched by him by means of eye-gouging. He leaves her body behind and steals her car; this is spotted by a gas station attendant. We then see that the diary was stolen by yet another model, Peggy, who took it because Isabella used it to document dark secrets of her co-workers, including the fact that she had lent Peggy money to have an abortion. She burns the diary, only to be captured by the killer, who takes her back to his lair and tortures her with a hot burner as to the diary's whereabouts - when she confirms he destroyed it, the killer murders her by shoving her face-first into the burner.
By this point the police have gotten involved and rounded up all the men in the models' lives, including Massimo, acting on the gas attendant's testimony. However, Peggy's body turns up in her co-worker Greta's trunk, and Greta is killed with the men still in custody; with all of them now having an alibi, the police release them. Massimo returns home and uses a secret passageway to enter the killer's lair, revealing himself, of course, to be the killer. He meets Cristina there, where it's revealed she's his lover and accomplice - the killings began when Isabella discovered the count's murder was no accident and had begun blackmailing Massimo and Cristina, when Massimo got fed up with it, he killed her, and then everyone who had gotten their hards on the diary documenting the blackmail. When he was detained, Cristina dressed up like the killer and murdered Greta - much to her own horror - to give him an alibi. Cristina wants to stop the killings, but Massimo browbeats her into doing one more - she is to go to another model's house, murder her and make it look like a suicide, and leave the killer's costume behind, making everyone think the killer is dead, then escape through the second floor balcony.
Cristina does so, but as she makes her escape, Massimo comes to the house and bangs on the door, screaming "Police!" The startled Cristina falls to her apparent demise, and Massimo smugly returns to his lair - but oops, Cristina's Not Quite Dead. She fills is the remaining holes of Massimo's plot - they weren't just lovers, but secretly husband and wife. Massimo had knowingly sent Cristina to her death, in hopes that with her gone and framed as the killer, he would inherit her millions. He feigns innocence; she feigns forgiveness; the two embrace and... she quickly pulls a pistol and shoots him dead. Cristina then uses the last of her strength to phone the police before expiring of her wounds over her treacherous husband's body.
Freudian Excuse or mitigating factors?
Zip. Just greedy.
Heinous standard?
Worst in story by a clear margin. Cristina helps him, but she's clearly uncomfortable with having to kill herself and is also blatantly the submissive partner. Plus, of course, he saw her as expendable too. Only question is if he clears baseline heinousness for the genre, but he's got five murders, counting the late Count (which is offscreen) and Cristina, plus a proxy kill in the final model he orders Cristina to murder. And of course, he doesn't give a rat's ass as long as he gets all that sweet sweet lira.
Verdict
Leaning yes, but as he's a proto-slasher, the only issue I can think of would be baseline heinousness for the genre, as he's obviously nothing compared to Michael, Jason et al.
edited 23rd Aug '17 9:58:48 AM by HamburgerTime
I don't think a film from 1964 needs to be compared to Freddy and Jason...I believe it's more a Giallo flick, with a lower standard. With the film being such a huge influence on even its own genre, I'm going with yes.
I'll do a rewrite for Haguro Dou, btw.
As for Walter? I say give his entry on the main film page, but also on the King page.
I'll
Massimo.
Lighty, for Film!Walter, where at Stephen King should he go? Under Book!Walter? At the end of the page in a new section?
The Mystery Killer.
In the write up mention how it's "one of the grandaddies" of the slasher genre.
Just a brief mention about it being one of the progenitors like we have with Die Hard and Hans Gruber.
edited 23rd Aug '17 1:30:59 PM by PolarPhantom
Is that really necessary?
And
Massimo.
edited 23rd Aug '17 10:43:46 AM by Tyk5919
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.- The Dark Tower (2017): Walter o' Dim, real name Walter Padick and known as The Man in Black, is an Evil Sorcerer who abducts multiple "special" children to use their psychic energy to try to annihilate the Dark Tower which protects existence from the hungry monstrosities that dwell outside reality. This is a process that leaves the children "burnt out" by the end, where Walter discards them. Having a dark enmity with the Gunslinger Roland Deschain, Walter destroys Roland's home, killing all his fellow Gunslingers, the last being Roland's own father who Walter murders in front of him. When 11-year-old Jake Chambers escapes Walter's men, Walter punishes them by forcing them to kill each other and sends soldiers to destroy an entire village Roland and Jake have taken refuge at. Murdering the local seer to get their location, Walter ambushes Jake's stepfather and mother, murdering both—the latter by burning her alive—and draws a smiley face and taunting message from her ashes for Jake to find. When Jake is captured, Walter attempts to use him to bring down the Dark Tower and start the apocalypse while facing Roland in a final battle.
- The Running Man: Damon Killian, host of The Running Man and head of the network in the dystopian future, runs a TV network where shows are aired that feature innocent people climbing ropes for dollars while vicious dogs lurk below; most of them fall. The star attraction, though, is The Running Man, where supposed criminals are released into a labyrinth to be hunted down by the vicious Stalkers and murdered. Blackmailing hero Ben Richards into playing the game, Damon then forces his friends to play despite his promises otherwise, and when a young woman digs into Richards's past, Killian manufactures a criminal history for her and throws her into the game as well. Even winning the game is no guarantee of safety, as the winners are disposed of while Killian lies about their survival. Smug, sociopathic and indifferent to human suffering, Killian defends himself by claiming that people just love television and as a TV star, he is giving them the violence they crave, no matter how many lives are ruined or ended.
- The Shawshank Redemption (based on Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption):
- Warden Samuel Norton seems like a stern but affable prison bureaucrat before he reveals the true extent of his immorality and corruption. He sets up a scheme to underbid public construction projects with cheap prison labor and pockets the buy-off money from the desperate private contractors he blackmails, using Andy's financial knowledge to launder the illegal money. When a new inmate named Tommy has proof of Andy's innocence, Norton has him shot in the yard by Captain Byron T. Hadley and has the murder passed off as an escape attempt. He throws Andy in solitary confinement for a month, then threatens to destroy everything Andy has built to improve Shawshank over the past 20 years in prison and make sure that he'll be handed over to the rapists again, before giving Andy another month in isolation just to think about it.
- Bogs Diamond is the leader of a prison gang called "The Sisters", who prey on weaker inmates to rape them again and again for as long as they like. Bogs sets his sights on Andy and together with his gang makes repeated attempts to rape and brutalize Andy over the course of several years, succeeding about half the time. When Andy tries to fight off the latest attempt, Bogs threatens to shiv Andy through the skull if he doesn't give him and his buddy oral sex. When Andy talks him out of it by playing on his ignorance, he beats Andy straight into the infirmary for a month instead.
edited 24th Aug '17 7:24:20 AM by ACW
'Yes' to Griswold and Massimo. Any and all attempts at putting Aku up should be promptly shut down unless we are absolutely certain that new evidence has come up. Which, from spending more time than I'd like to admit reading that planned EP? Isn't the case.
Alrighty, got us a nice little baddie here from Marvel MAX that I think just might make it.
Who is he?
Colonel Richard Trask is The Heavy of the Marvel MAX series Apache Skies, which takes place back in the Old West.
What has he done?
Trask is first seen hiring out his services to William Tyler, a railroad tycoon who delves into criminal enterprises. Tyler hires Trask to go to the small town of Sagoro to protect his adult son, Billy, from vigiliantes seeking his death because of his murder of a good man named the Apache Kid.
Trask shows up in Sagoro to find that Billy has been gunned down by the Apache Kid's friend, Johnny Bart, and sends a telegram to Tyler with the news.
After intidimating the sheriff, Trask receives a reply from Tyler to force everyone in the town to the outskirts of it, then burn the entire town to the ground as revenge. Trask then pulls his gun and blows the sheriff's brains out, smugly proclaiming "You're fired." before setting the town ablaze and forcing the townsfolk to flee.
The next day, when a train arrives in the ruined town of Sagoro, the townsfolk try to hop aboard to get to the next town for food and shelter. Trask's men informs them all that he has ordered them to walk to the next town, not ride the train or horses. The next town is over fifty miles away.
After a conductor sneaks the townsfolk onto the train and lets them go on ahead, Trask offers to kill the man for Tyler, but Tyler informs him he's overpaid for that, and instead orders him to continue tracking Johnny.
Eventually, Trask learns that Johnny has hopped aboard a train alongside his partner, Rosa, with said train transporting nearly a dozen Indian children as well.
When a priest who was overseeing the kids appeals to Tyler to hunt and kill Johnny to save the children, Trask jumps into the conversation to inform the priest that he's not just going to kill Johnny and Rosa. He's going to bring back the Indian children's scalps to sell them to Tyler. Tyler then executes the priest and grants Trask one of his trains to hunt Johnny.
Pursuing Johnny across the railroads, when Trask is confronted by the conductor of his train, informing him that the tracks ahead are too rickety to cross, Trask shoots the man in the head for his squeamishness, and continues heading for Johnny.
Finally dueling Johnny, Trask tries to gun him down then head for the children, only for Johnny to get theupperhand and kill Trask, then Tyler, saving the Indian children and ending the duo's evil outlaw-ish ways.
Trask is also noted to have taken part in a large "war" where he killed many people, but this is completely offscreen, as an aside. Just thought I'd mention it.
Freudian Excuse or other redeeming features?
None. Trask is just a smug asshat working for Tyler for cash, and while their amicable enough with each other, it is purely a business relationship.
Heinousness?
In-story, Trask is the worst alongside Tyler. Tyler may be his boss and is giving most of the orders, but Trask not only happily carries these out, but also comes up with crimes of his own. Gunning down the sheriff, ordering the townsfolk to walk fifty miles to the next town, and coming up with the idea of scalping children? All Trask as far as the story shows. Tyler may fully endorse these, but Trask is the one who takes the initiative from what is shown. So I'd say he clears that.
As for Marvel/Marvel MAX as a whole, I think Trask stands out with what he's working with. He's in the Old West with limited resources, and yet nearly condemns an entire town to death, guns down several innocent people just for annoying him, and plans to murder and scalp nearly a dozen children, all for a profit and fun.
Final Verdict?
Methinks a Keep.
Oh, and Tyler himself doesn't count. Despite his prickishness, he does have a twisted sort of care for his son, and seems to love his deceased wife.
edited 23rd Aug '17 11:58:39 AM by Ravok
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!

MahStache, I just have a list of my CM writeups in my profile.
edited 23rd Aug '17 6:22:35 AM by ACW