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
Voruul
Second one: The Big Bad of the trilogy, Sultae.
Who is Sultae?
Sultae is a powerful Sha'Ree, the equivalent to elves. A powerful, long-lived, humanoid species that are near physical gods and the source of magic weaponry. Sultae was, along with some of her fellows, thought to be the bearer of a magic plague. In order to save their species, the plaguebearers were exiled to await death, though it's later revealed they voluntarily went into exile. It turned out they didn't actually have the plague, but...Sultae slowly began to grow furious at the notion she was cut off to die and like any Knight Templar, started to blame all others for it. Deciding that the lesser races were to blame for her misfortune, Sultae recovered and returned to the Sha'Ree, trying to convince them to destroy the younger races.When they balked, Sultae all but exterminated her own people. Taking the O'hra, Sultae began to arm the more evil races, including the Grol, setting them on the human kingdoms to exterminate them while secretly raising her own magic forces. Sultae intends to see the more peaceful races exterminated to a one before she turns them on one another, has her own servitors exterminate them and then has them march into the sea while she creates a new Sha'Ree race from the survivors.
In order to do this, she tries to find the location of what she needs by threatening one of the few Sha'Ree survivors Uthul, torturing one of his companions in front of her family. She also captures one of the few Sha'Ree survivors, Tyreh, who she deems 'worthy' of fathering a new race with her...so she keeps him hostage, tortures him and tries to mindfuck him into sleeping with her willingly, as he won't be fertile if she just rapes him unwillingly. She intends to do this till he submits. It turns out her actions get so bad she's literally poisoning the world around them so that the goddess Ahrlee is ready to just initiate an apocalypse and start over. Sultae? Doesn't care at all. The survivors intend to flee to other lands to get clear while Sultae attempts to wipe them out, only for Uthul to attempt to plea with her to see reason. This goes as well as you can expect, forcing Braelyn, one of the main heroes and local Action Girl to ambush Sultae and impale her to the ground before stabbing her through the face to finish her.
Heinousness?
Totally sets it. A near omnicidal psychopath, total racist and facilitator of genocide.
Mitigating Qualities?
Sultae is a pure Knight Templar and religious fanatic. I don't think hr backstory holds up since she takes it SO far out of proportion. While she was sent to die for the good of the many, her way of coping was to blame everyone else for screwing up the world, try to wipe them out and wipe out and recreate her own race in her image. Given all other Sha'Ree consider her royally screwed up, and she has no compunction wiping them out as 'traitors' for disagreeing with her, while trying o exterminate all that lives and showing no remorse when the goddess herself shows how wrong her actions are? Pass.
Conclusion?
I'd say keeper.
Edited by Lightysnake on Aug 10th 2020 at 8:15:05 AM
I'm honestly iffy on both (though leaning yes on Vorrul):
- Vorrul: The Tolen loathe the Grol, but amongst the Grol themselves, is Vorrul noticeably worse?
- Sultae: "While she was sent to die for the good of the many..." She may've gone into Disproportionate Retribution levels, but honestly? I can see how being sent to die might screw someone up.
edited 28th Dec '17 10:38:13 AM by ACW
So uh Anita Roycewood and her husband are on the main page on Generic Doomsday Villain. I know Anita is listed in the Criminial Minds page, so do you want me to cut her from the Generic Doomsday Villain page.
This is the entry:
- Criminal Minds, despite its main premise being about discovering Serial Killers' Freudian Excuses, never reveals the motive(s) of the Roycewood family in Season 5's "Mosley Lane". The most we do know about them is that they've spent over a decade utilizing their mortuary business to elaborately abduct, abuse, and murder countless children — only sparing the very first one because they need an extra accomplice in their crimes — and they're both killed off in different fitting ways by the episode's conclusion.
edited 28th Dec '17 1:02:30 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."![]()
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Please do; that's more a Flat Character. I made the change awhile ago at Criminal Minds: UnSubs.
Off the top of my head, 20-30. Lighty himself has a dozen.
edited 28th Dec '17 1:00:42 PM by ACW
Okay, effort post time. It's another fan-fic example, this time from the MCU Rewrites series. For context, the series started as a Fix Fic for Avengers: Age of Ultron, focusing on tightening up the plot and fixing characterization issues from the movie. There some follow-ups afterwards, most of them building up to the eventual Civil War rewrite. Overall, I think these are decent reads, the bits of characterization between the Avengers being the most stand-out aspect of the series.
My candidate is from Black Widow
, an attempt to tell a solo tale focusing on the origin of Black Widow. Natasha has been put on trial after leaking all of SHIELD's info after Captain America: The Winter Soldier and has to give an account of her past crimes from before she joined SHIELD. Our candidate had a minor appearance in Age of Ultron, but that was only during some brief flashbacks and didn't really go to in-depth on her crimes. Not so here...
Who Is She and What Does She Do?
Madame B was the head instructor of the Red Room, a faction of the KGB dedicated to taking young girls and training them to be deadly sleeper agents. When taken in, the girls are not given any details of their former lives and spend the first decade of their lives focusing on honing their combat and survival skills. When the girls are thirteen years old, that’s when the second phase of their training begins. Madame B puts their skills to test through various cruel methods and conditioning. The girls are brainwashed into believing false pasts for themselves and are given trigger phrases that will make them completely subservient to their handlers if they show any sign of resistance. Our first introduction to her in the story has her instruct a group of girls through an arduous ballet session that lasts for several hours. The girls are expected to not show any signs of fatigue and when one girl stumbles from exhaustion, Madame B has her taken away to be executed for her failure. We later see Natasha undergo the same ordeal, and her ballet shoes are filled with blood by the end of her session.
Knowing that Natasha was the top of her class, Madame B put her through a harder training regiment than the other girls. Making a deal with HYDRA, Madame B was lent the Winter Soldier to serve as Natasha’s personal tutor in exchange for giving them details on the Red Room’s training program. Natasha was forced to train out in the wilderness with Winter Soldier, having to scavenge her own food and supplies just to survive out in the bitter cold. Eventually, Natasha and her fellow class are given a written exam in order to pass the program, and two girls are led off to their deaths when they fail to complete the test on time. Afterwards, Madame B has Natasha spar with her best friend Yelena. Natasha is able to best Yelena in combat and Madame B orders her to kill her to prove her loyalty to her handlers.
Madame B later presents her latest graduates to her superiors in demonstrates her program’s effectiveness by having Natasha execute a bound-and-gagged man in cold blood. Madame B then brings in another of her students and orders her to execute a young boy, also tied-up and gagged. When she hesitates, Madame B repeats the girl’s trigger words and has her kill the boy with no hesitation.
Soon Natasha and the others are sent on missions for Russia, most of which involved seducing and assassinating key diplomats. To ensure that their cover is never blown, each agent is brainwashed periodically and given a new back story to believe during their missions. Eventually, Natasha begins feel remorse over the things she’s done, particularly after starting a hospital fire to kill a leader of the Russian mob. Madame B is informed of Natasha’s guilt and has her subjected to electroshock therapy to erase her growing compassion.
These mind wipes start to lose their effectiveness on Natasha and after encountering SHIELD agent Clint Barton, Madame B scolds her for failing to kill him. She orders Natasha to be subjected to intense reprogramming after she resists another rehabilitation session. Afterwards, Madame B orders the now subservient Natasha to assassinate Barton.
This plan backfires as Natasha is able to fight her conditioning and with the help of Clint, defects from Russia and joins up with SHIELD. Natasha is still haunted by her experiences in the Red Room and flees back to Russia to find her trigger words and hopefully erase her mental programming. She and Barton infiltrate the Red Room and are eventually confronted by Madame B, who has been looking forward to getting revenge on Natasha for her betrayal. The two fight, but Natasha eventually gains the upper hand and stabs Madame B in the gut, killing her.
Redeeming Qualities
Madame B is pretty heatless to the girls under her watch, viewing them only as weapons that need to pointed at the right target and nothing more. Now Madame B does care about loyalty to her homeland first and foremost, as she calls out Natasha for doubting her missions and for later betraying her country. Whether this a real redeeming quality is up in the air, as her form of loyalty involves systemic abuse of children and training them to be subservient killing machines for her country. Madame B is also willing to work with HYDRA, who were former Nazis (and yes, the fic does treat HYDRA as if they're still a neo-Nazi group) and if my knowledge on World War Two is accurate, the Russians have a bit of uneasy history with Nazis
.
Freudian Excuse
There is a brief bit where Clint finds a recording of Madame B and Natasha talking about why she has to kill so many people:
Yeah, I don't think that justifies what those girls had to go through. The Red Room was still operational years after the end of the Cold War, and there's no history of any of America or its allies using such brutal methods like this. Natasha was sent to kill diplomats and Madame B doesn't care about the dozens of presumably Russian children that died in the hospital fire that Natasha caused. Natasha describes the Red Room's purpose was to infiltrate foreign countries and sow chaos to gain more power for Russia and we see no evidence to the contrary.
Heinousness:
I'll assume we're all familiar with the heinous standard of the MCU by now, and I think that Madame B passes. Dozens of girls were tortured and killed under her watch, something I don't think a lot of villains have accomplished. She's officially sanctioned by the government, so I think she does the most with the resources at her hands. We learn that one of her students defected to HYDRA because her treatment at her hands, and even some of HYDRA's best soldiers couldn't survive that type of training that she provided.
She definitely stands out compared with other villains in the MCU Rewrites series. Other HYDRA agents like Strucker, Viper, or Sin spend most of their time squabbling with each other than accomplishing actual villainy. The Grim Reaper and Gorgon are hire thugs, even if the latter is the one who killed Quicksilver in this version. Rumlow attempts to use HYDRA's other Winter Soldiers to sow chaos, but he never gets around to implementing his plan. Zemo and Ultron don't count for the reasons their canon counterparts don't. In fact Ultron's less heinous than in the movie because he lacks a lot of his crueler moments, doesn't attempt to kill as many people, and is being manipulated by Thanos throughout the story. And no, Thanos doesn't do much aside from manipulating Ultron.
Verdict?:
While Madame B is ultimately serving her country, I feel her methods are sufficiently cruel enough to give her a
. She's the one trains them to be heartless killers, as well as ordering them to be brainwashed and tortured. She doesn't have much oversight from her higher-ups, so she's the one running the show through most of the story and the one who has the most blood on her hands.
Side note, the author used Hypothetical Casting for her stories and casted Helen Mirren as Madame B. Don't know if she's played a Complete Monster before, but I thought that'd be something you guys would find interesting.
Hmm, head instructor, so not just a cog. Definitely heinous enough. The real question is how much Patriotic Fervor and loyalty to country are mitigating, Honestly, in this case, I have enough doubt to abstain.
Ok so I have a candidate
Who is Alma Coin and what does she do?
Alma Coin is the leader of the rebellion and the secret antagonist of both Mockingjay parts. She is first introduced furiously berating the leaders for rescuing Katniss and leaving Peeta, arguing Katniss's death would be more useful to the Rebellion. She attempts to convince Katniss to the head of the hearts and minds strategy, but is angered by Katniss's demands, and only reluctantly relents. She later orders an evacuation when the Capitol announces a bombing run, and then orders a strike team into the Capitol to rescue Peeta and comforts Katniss when she wakes after it is revealed Peeta is insane.
In Film Two, Coin secretly gives orders for Katniss to kill Snow after the fall of District Two. During this time, Katniss deduces Peeta was sent with the team to have him kill her and make her a martyr, and during the hunt for Snow, Coin sends a swath of bombs to kill Peackeeepers and wounding innocent children, then orders a second bombing run that kills Prim and countless other rebel and Capitol. Upon learning from Snow about the ploy, Katniss is sickened when Coin announces herself president for life and calls for more Hunger Games with Capitol children to get revenge on them. However during the public execution of Snow, Katniss shoots Coin dead instead, ending the insane president's lust for power.
Heinousness
Oh yes. Coin commits a ton of Obligatory War Crime Scenes, especially in Part Two. In Film One, she authorizes suicide attacks, against war law. She sees people as completely expendable, and is very ungrateful to Katniss. The biggest strikes against her are the bombings that kill innocent children, including Prim just to ensure her victory, and then announcing the more Hunger Games even though the Capitol children had nothing to do with the games.
In terms of comparison with Snow, Snow admits Coin outdid him with the bombing scare. I will repeat, the guy she has to compete with admits she is even more of a monster than him. Best exemplified is when he tells Katniss "We promised not to lie to each other" indicating that Snow learned about the plot later on, oh and she was utterly willing to become an even more horrible person than Snow was. And given what Snow did to victors in the hunger games, it is made pretty clear that Coin will just amp it up much more horribly. Coin easily blows past the heinous standard.
Mitigating Factors
None. No clear Freudian Excuse is given, and all of her potentially redeeming traits are revealed to be attempts to disguise her lust for power and cruelty. Nothing mitigating here.
Final Thoughts
Given all that she did, and what she promised to do, very much an easy
.
Well is this Coin a dollar we want to flip?
Coin.
She's a Well Intentioned Extremsit whoose outclassed by presiden Snow
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
