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
I don’t want Ren redeemed either because it would be predictable, but if he is, fine.
Actually Julianne Moore playing a CM (as out there as Poppy is) isn’t too surprising because of her voicing ARIIA in Eagle Eye (who doesn’t count, but is still an intimidating villain). And that alone is not taking Margaret White and Alma Coin into account.
In the book, she falls under Offscreen Villainy and is overshadowed by her own granddaughter Bony Lizzie.
In the film, my memories are more blurry but I think she loved John Gregory.
edited 30th Oct '17 10:00:45 AM by Silverblade2
Anyways, more writeups. Halloween candidate tomorrow.
- Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures: Many of the one-shot villains manage to stand out in evil:
- James Compton from "AMOK" is a former special forces operative thought killed-in-action but now working as a freelance mercenary for whoever can hire him. Paid by a private party to investigate a hindrance to the drug trade in Borneo, Compton assumes the identity of "Mitchell Stramm" after his party is seemingly wiped out by the native Amok monster, winning his way into the Quest's family's good graces and finding the village that's been disrupting the drug trade. Smugly betraying the Quests at this point, Compton opts to simply massacre every last native man, woman, and child in the village to remove them as an obstacle, gloating that his employers will pay him handsomely for each head he brings back to them, attached to the bodies or not.
- The succubus/vampire known as Elise Lenoir from "Eclipse" initially appears to be a victim, an innocent young woman on the run from evil men. The twist comes when it's revealed Elise was maintaining her youth and beauty by draining the life from beautiful, innocent women and the man hunting her was trying to avenge his sister when she fell victim to her. Elise murdered the men who tried to tail her, and later mind-controlled Hadji into her slave to bring Jessie to her for her food source. When her right-hand man protested about Elise trying to replace him with Hadji, Elise declared he was right and sucked the life from him as well. When her deadline of an eclipse was approaching, Elise abandoned all pretense of charm and subtlety and assumed her monstrous true form to kill everyone around and drain Jessie's life.
- Dja'Lang Mukharno from "Diamonds and Jade" is a puppeteer and brother of Kumar who exploits his people's old traditions for personal benefit. Coaxing his weak-willed brother into routinely selling off a rare gem to greedy buyers, Dja'Lang summons a shadow demon to brutally kill the buyers and anyone else in the premises to keep the money and the gem. Dja'Lang attempts to kill the Quest family and their friend Jade alongside the cops in the area when Jade sets Kumar up, and when Kumar loses the gem to the Quest family, Dja'Lang turns the shadow beast on him with full intent to murder him for his failure, laughing that he should have killed him years ago.
- Blast!: Michael Kittredge, real name Talbert Skyler, is a seemingly fanatical eco-terrorist who's extreme agenda hides much more sinister ends. Taking an oil rig hostage and massacring those who attempt to escape, Skyler ruthlessly attempts to murder its captain Lamont Dixon, showing no care to the life of his young companion Eric he endangers in the process and later coldly executing the one doctor on the ship after she loses Eric. Capturing and violently torturing Dixon, Dixon finally learns that Skyler murdered the real Kittredge to take his identity and use a believable agenda to cover his real plan, which involves launching an EMP over California to knock out the state's power to destroy any evidence of Skyler's mass robberies. When confronted by a horrified Dixon on the countless innocent lives this would cost, Skyler nonchalantly brushes them aside and threatens to murder Eric right in front of him to goad him into staying down.
- Kaizen Gamorra, patriarch of Clan Gamorra after killing his brothers and absolute dictator of the rogue Asian nation Gamorra, is a cruel sadist even by the standards of Wildstorm's rogues gallery. Deposed as the ruler of his nation for decades and replaced with the imposter John Colt, Kaizen takes over Gamorra again once Colt is deposed and quickly proves himself miles worse than his predecessor, having a plane full of two-hundred-and-thirty-three innocent people bombed with no survivors and allowing the Gen-Factor stored on the plane to spill into the nearby town to kill most of its populace through nightmarish mutation. Gleefully boasting that his very nation and philosophies are founded on terrorism for its own sake, Kaizen uses his army of cloned superhumans in an attempt to slaughter millions of people across the world's most major cities to transfix the planet with fear. Violently oppressing his own people when not actively attempting to attack the rest of the world, marrying wives he soon discards by countless numbers and having the nation's Mechajin population brutally exploited as slaves of every sort, Kaizen's reaction to the coming end of the world is to bring his estranged daughter to his side through manipulation and turn Gamorra into a floating, impenetrable superweapon. When the apocalypse hits, Kaizen has his superhuman soldiers massacre the survivors by the hundreds, intending to plunder the remains of Earth for resources before using the Bleed to attack, crush, and conquer every other parallel Earth. A tyrant who devotes himself to the spread of terror and suffering for nothing more than his own amusement, Kaizen boils down his philosophies to being a wolf in a world of sheep, a terrorist only too gleeful to slaughter millions of people and keep all else cowed in perpetual fear of what he can do to them.
Kaizen's two quotes as well... once he's put up, I'll put them on the quotes page.
edited 30th Oct '17 12:34:54 PM by Scraggle
Keep in mind there are like dozens maybe hundreds of trees so yeah the beast wanting to stay immortal is not a redeeming quality in my mind. The fact its also a Dirty Coward makes it more clear that like ruuyga and other villains we have up of that particular type, he will step on anyone that gets in his way and it shows more Selfish Evil than anything else.
edited 30th Oct '17 12:54:26 PM by miraculous
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Another example would be Jaques from Zombie Island. He is helping Simone and Lena because he wants immortality. Unlike them, he accepted the offer knowing what would happen, and he lacks a tragic backstory. Realistically, I suppose you could make the argument that if he didn't agree, they would have used him as one of their victims, but the fact that he clearly enjoys the benefits of immortality, coupled with his apparent sadism (shown when he grabs Shaggy and Scooby by the throats and goes "Aw what's the matter, cat got your tongue?"), is enough to make him count despite that possibility. Keep in mind that the three of them were doing that for 200 years, and they used more than three victims per year sometimes as we see, meaning that he's partially responsible for more than 600 deaths.
Another example would be some vampires. They have to drink blood in order to quench their thirst, but if they show sadism, they can count. If they go beyond what they have to do, they can count. A good example would be the version of Dracula from Blacula, who not only does the regular vampire stuff, but is involved in the slave trade. Theoritically, a vampire could do what they have to without hurting anyone if they go after animals (especially dangerous ones), take blood donations, go to blood banks, and use artificial blood.
Wanting to continue living is one thing, but if you want it to be forever (or at least until the end of the world), that's another thing, especially if you show sadism while doing it. I have heard that the more you do something bad, the less remorse you feel for it, which could justify them not caring, but being sadistic about it is another thing.
jjjStupid question but what is up with the odd misuse of Greater-Scope Villain on this site as I see it being used incorrectly in multiple write ups. Hell one canditate I want to propose has that in there character page when they start of as a flashback villain but come back and take the main villain position for the last 55 chapters of a 100 chapter manga. Well his predecessor is apparently the Big Bad for some reason despite only being both a pawn to him and only showing up in the first 45 chapters.
edited 30th Oct '17 2:24:22 PM by miraculous
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Probably a remnant of back when Greater-Scope Villain was called Bigger Bad, so people would use it whenever there was a villain who was a greater threat than the current Big Bad.
The problem with Hux seems to be his fate is not too dissimilar to the First Order Stormtroopers. He's just another brainwashed fanatic whose taking out his problems on those lower than him.
Comparing him to Tarkin is useful, since Hux seems to be a genuine foil to him. Tarkin, starting off as a sweet kid, embraced his family's psychotic philosophy after deciding it gave him a thrill. Hux was forced into his position. His FE is probably too tough to work around.
I would be fine with Phasma counting, but it won't be easy to stand out with as high a heinous standard as SW has. Like, she has to compete with all the Clone Wars baddies we were discussing prior for a start.
Still we got a month before The Last Jedi comes out. If anyone's arcs end in that film we can discuss them then. Of course, Expanded Universe stuff is pumped out all the time, so even if they die we might learn more about them later on.
I love how basically all of us expect Krennic to get cut at some point. I love that he's so shit.
His actor seems to be great at rather pathetic villains. Funny thing is, for a while he was in talks to be the new Pennywise. I mean, I can't actually imagine a better performance than Skarsgard's, but I still would have loved to see it.
edited 30th Oct '17 4:17:44 PM by YamiVizziniX
There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.- Greater-Scope Villain tends to be taken as "character whose the main antagonist but either stays behind the scene or shows up less than another less powerful character";
- I've seen more uses of Dragon-in-Chief describing The Heavy than actual accurate ones;
- Dragon Ascendant specifically refers to a character who doesn't have a hand in the downfall of the previous Big Bad but often gets misued when The Starscream would be the applicable trope
Then there are the cases where the GSV BECOMES the BB (hello Eredin).
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Well, it seems to me that you have to combine all appearances of Krennic to make him count. Apart from having Lyra Erso killed and ordering the destruction of Jedha City, which would cause monumental damage to the planet, he's The Heavy of Rogue One, but he Can't Catch Up to Tarkin and Vader.
So I remember a few pages back we were talking about actors we didn't expect to play a CM. Nick Jonas is definitely on my list.
edited 30th Oct '17 5:59:52 PM by k410ren
"I'll show you the Dark Side." CM actors and killsAlright, since it's almost Halloween, I figure I'd propose a creepypasta candidate that I stumbled across a while ago and only remembered recently. Here we go (spoilers of course).
What is the work?
The story, called I had to psychologically evaluate a serial killer; I don't know what to report
is about a psychologist named Parker doing as the title says: evaluating a serial killer named Adam to determine if he's fit for trial or not.
Who is he and what has he done?
Adam's father (named Howard) is a violent sadist, who horribly tortures Adam through means such as burning him with cigarette butts, feeding him broken glass, and wrapping his arms in barbed wire. When Adam's mother tries to defending him, Howard beats her as well. During one of Howard's torture sessions with Adam on his eighth birthday, Adam's mother attempts to intervene, which causes Howard to strangle her to death. At this point, Adam develops a Split Personality and on of his personalities threatens to go to the police unless Howard stops the abuse. Howard begrudgingly agrees to these terms.
Unable to torture Adam, Howard uses his charm with women to lure them back to his house, and torture them in the same way he had tortured Adam, followed by death via strangulation, killing twenty-two people in all. Once Adam is eighteen, several of his split personalities decide to kill Howard in revenge for the abuse Adam has suffered and to stop the murders. Once they kill Howard, however, he soon comes back as a malevolent ghost, demanding that Adam bring him more victims or suffer from additional abuse. Adam and his personalities reluctantly agree, and bring Howard's ghost three more women to violently torture and kill before getting caught. By the end of the story, Howard's ghost is still tormenting Adam, and Adam's personalities beg for Adam to be declared sane in order to get the death penalty and finally be free of Howard's abuse.
Freudian Excuse or Mitigating Factors?
None.
Heinous Standard?
The story is in continuity with another creepypasta (which I will get to tomorrow, hopefully), but the villain in that is of a much different nature and resource tier.
Aside from that, he's a child abuser and has a body count of over two dozen with a horrific MO, so I think he clears the baseline.
Final Verdict?
from me.
edited 30th Oct '17 6:11:44 PM by ThePest179

Wow, Kaizen gets a rather anticlimactic
◊ death