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. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
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
V
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Oikawa
Ultimate Moral Compass
Oikawa.
Here are the entries for the Bucelarii books. As always, if there are any problems with them, let me know, and I'll fix them.
- The Demon of Voramis is one of the many Abiarazi demons serving Sage and Warmaster, and the most sadistic. Eons ago, he fought alongside Kharna, where he slaughtered countless humans before going into hiding after Kharna’s banishment. Using his shapeshifting abilities, he transforms himself into various figures, such as the corrupt Lord Jahel, and The First. As The First, he leads The Bloody Hand, a cult who murder, torture, and engage in human sex trafficking, ruling Voramis from underground. As Jahel, he commands the Heresiarchs and the Dark Heresy, a group who torture and spy on innocents, allowing The Bloody Hand to not face any punishment. Seeing the Hunter as the key to bringing back Kharna, he disguises himself as Lord Cyrannius to trick him into killing Brother Securus, who was keeping Kharna at bay. After kidnapping and torturing Hunter, he has him arrested by the Heresiarchs, where he allows him to escape, but not before ordering his men to kill every innocent person Hunter loves. He later kidnaps Farida, a child whom Hunter cherishes, and tortures her to death in order to lure an angry Hunter to him. After capturing Hunter, he offers him to join him in his human slaughtering spree, but when he refuses, he attempts to use his soul to summon Kharna. After Hunter escapes, The Demon uses fellow Abiarazi Thane to kill him, not caring when he’s killed by Hunter. When Celcia attempts to protect The Demon from Hunter, he describes her as a pawn in his game before trying to kill her. Despite being a demon supremacist, The Demon doesn’t really care for his kind, and remains Hunter’s most personal enemy.
- Lord Toramin, aka The Demon of Malandria, is another Abiarazi demon, the leader of the Order of Midas, and a servant to Sage and Warmaster, along with Garanis. Once a servant to the lowest ranking Abiarazi commander, Toramin, under the task of freeing Kharna, chooses to establish a base in Malandria. Gathering a group of merchants desiring to make their city better, Toramin promises them money and power in exchange for their services, forming the Order of Midas and spreading fear across Malandria. He later leads a purge where he kills all the Cleric Illusionists in town who aren’t noble to him, stealing their souls while claiming that their religious orders were a threat to his power. Putting the city’s homeless population in a single alleyway, he has Garanis search for the perfect sacrifice victim from the alley, claiming to be “cleansing the town of filth.” Other kidnapped victims are placed in a maze with a flamethrower robot that will kill them, with the prize at the end being poisonous traps and the sacrifice room. Toramin does all this because he feels frightened souls will bring Kharna back faster. Kidnapping Bardin, he has him ready to be sacrificed until Hunter interferes, where Toramin threatens Bardin’s life unless Hunter joins him. When Hunter agrees, Toramin kills one of his men while promising the others that he’ll kill them all, seeing them as useless. When Hunter goes against his plans, he kills Bardin in retaliation, and tries to absorb Hunter’s soul to free Kharna. A liar who preaches false promises, Toramin is nothing but a smug, sociopathic elitist.
- Il Seytani is the infamous bandit king of the Sah’raa Advent. Commanding a camp of operations, Seytani has his thieves plunder traveling caravans, where they kill the adults, steal weapons for money, and kidnap the children to be whipped and sold into slavery. When Hunter’s caravan is targeted by the thieves, he searches for Hailen after he and the caravan’s children are taken away. When Hunter arrives, Seytani forces him to become his assassin, threatening to kill Hailen if he doesn’t comply. Seytani tasks Hunter to kill al-Malek, the king of Al Hani, in four days. Without the king, Seytani can roam the desert unchecked without any law enforcement to stop him. Not trusting Hunter to complete his task, he sends Younis to spy on him, planning on having him kill Hunter when he’s finished. When Hunter returns to save Hailen, Seytani sends his war heads to kill Hunter, ducking out of the battle so that he can hold Hailen hostage in exchange for Hunter’s life, all while bragging about how he had already sold the caravan children to slavery. With his final breath, Seytani poisons Hunter with his iron dagger, knowing that Hunter will have to kill Hailen in order to cure himself. Cruelly malicious, Il Seytani proved to be one of the worst humans the Hunter encountered.
- Captain Al-Zahar, while appearing to be a Hot-Blooded, strict Co-Dragon to the Abiarazi Queen Asalah, is revealed to be far worse. Enraged that al-Malek brought peace to Al Hani, Al-Zahar participates in Asalah’s attempt to assassinate al-Malek and have her usurp the throne, where she plans to start a war between the remaining kingdoms to bring about Kharna. Al-Zahar hopes to participate in the war, where he can kill till his heart’s content and lead his armies into battle. Knowing that he’s working with an Abiarazi demon, he kills his own royal guards without a twinge of guilt, smashes the back of Saima’s head before jamming a knife down the back of her skull once Asalah has no need for her, and tries to kill Hunter once he refuses to cooperate with Asalah. A vicious soldier wearing a mask of heroism, Al-Zahar was willing to plunge his land into chaos and destruction just to have fun killing people.
edited 11th Jan '18 9:24:04 AM by therealjackieboy
"No running in the halls!"
On the Bucelarii...someone brought up moral agency as a factor. Can this be addressed?
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Zykan, barely (heinousness issues; the loyalty seems more fear than redeeming loyalty).
"The story takes place before Volume Three, so Cinder's major actions have not yet set the standard."
Doesn't make a difference. Villains can be overshadowed by later villains. Abstain.
Oikawa.
Milestone Comics will be locked tomorrow. Here's Demon Fox and leader:
- Blood Syndicate: The sinister spirit known only as the Demon Fox is the sister of the Chinese warrior Kwai, and has lived for seventy-seven cycles bringing death and ruin to everything around her for fun. An emotional vampire known who fashions herself as the "Lord of Lies", the Demon Fox has a special tendency to torment her victims by twisting the truth to hurt them, demonstrating this when the leader of the Coalition, John Wing, summons her to kill the Blood Syndicate. Unsatisfied with simply slaughtering them, the Demon Fox mentally breaks and brutalizes them first before casually snapping Wing's neck after she feels she's fulfilled his wishes. Throughout the rest of the comic's run, the Demon Fox convinces Masquerade to assume the identity of the Blood Syndicate's deceased leader, causing her to lose her own identity in the process; makes Brickhouse miscarry her own child out of spite; and, when finally freed from the cycle imposed on her by her father and offered peace by Kwai, the Demon Fox simply sneers and pledges herself to destroying her sister and everyone close to her for the rest of her life to deny her any semblance of a normal life—something she's already dedicated herself to doing from the very start of their long conflict. A monstrous sadist, the Demon Fox was among the very worst the Blood Syndicate ever had to face.
- Wise Son: The White Wolf: The vicious leader of the Children of the Ivory Fist is a racist psychopath driven by a violent crusade to eradicate what he sees as filth. Precipitating a wave of violence over Paris Island by his group and ordering several noted ministers to be murdered around the city to strike fear into the hearts of the community and murdering one of the vagrants in the city himself when he's brought to him, the Ivory Fist's leader eventually reveals his disgust for all non-white people in the city, admitting to Blood Syndicate leader Wise Son that he is simply using the murder of one of his own men as shallow rhetoric for his murders and confessing that he wants to ignite a race war to kill off all non-whites from the streets. To avenge what he sees is a slight to him from Wise Son, the Ivory Fist leader spitefully blows up the store Wise Son defends, killing its elderly couple, and trying to have Wise Son and his pregnant ex-girlfriend gunned down in the latter's own apartment.
edited 11th Jan '18 9:18:52 AM by ACW
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
What's the vote tally for al-Zahar? I'm not sure he's as bad as the other human.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Lizzid people!
Ultimate Moral Compass
On the Bucelarii moral agency issues with the Abiarazi, the Abiarazi were decent creatures, but when humans started killing their kind off for being seen as evil eons ago, they grew a humongous grudge against mankind that continues to grow. And besides, there are three more books left in the series, so maybe we will see a kind Abiarazi.
This doesn't excuse all of their actions mind you, but they weren't always the terrible creatures we see today.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Al-Zahar got 5 and 1 undecided.
edited 11th Jan '18 10:12:10 AM by therealjackieboy
"No running in the halls!"
The Unknown Unknown
Okay, guys, I'm back from my business trip safe and sound. I see I missed quite a bit.
Oikawa.
to Zykar and Oikawa
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Hikawa
As for Oikawa, in the show I believe he had a Redemption Equals Death. How is that addressed in the fic?
Where is the writeup for Spac... I mean Underwood?
edited 11th Jan '18 11:50:33 AM by randomtroper89
Goku Black
Ravok will do the write-up for spac.. I mean Underwood with the rest of his batch.
edited 11th Jan '18 12:01:36 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."
Yea to Oikowa... I'll give Zahar the benefit and say aye.
It'll come when it comes.
edited 11th Jan '18 12:02:09 PM by Scraggle
Sorry if I sounded impatient. It has been a while and this is a writeup I am looking forward to seeing.
edited 11th Jan '18 12:16:40 PM by randomtroper89
Same here. I'm kind of annoyed at myself for not having set aside the time to watch season 5 yet (though I still plan to). Never imagined Frank would so thoroughly subvert his redeeming qualities, and it still seems like a bit of a stretch (especially with his college friend), but not having watched in a while I won't argue (though there may be some ancillary trope cleanup needed). Certainly a magnetic performance... it's a shame.
(I wonder if, ironically, he might have gotten some redeeming quality back if he had finished his planned arc.)
There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.
RIP Toriyama
'Yes' to Oikawa.
Underwood will be coming up soon, I assure everyone. Just gimme time, I'm a busy man. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Before that, however, I need to bring something up that I feel bears mentioning...I recently read the Empire duology by David Dunwoody (Ugh), and wanted to bring up some things. While I have some reservations about two of the three listed CMs, I specifically want to talk about the third one, Baron Tetch. Here's his write-up:
- Baron Tetch, along with several other children, was left in the care of Steven Addison. After killing Addison, Tetch presented himself as a savior to the other children while slowly poisoning their food with toxic energy from the swamp surrounding the manor, eventually killing them and turning them—save Lilith—into afterdead, zombies capable of being trained, along with sawing the skull of Addison's Great Dane onto the afterdead Addison, now called Sawbones, something he enjoyed. When Lily's parents came to retrieve her, Baron killed them so he could have Lily, who is just entering puberty, all to himself, having developed an attraction to her. Tetch kept Lilith locked in the manor and using the afterdead as slaves who he abuses and mistreats while feeding them human flesh retrieved by Sawbones. The afterdead have been trained to kill any intruders, Tetch draining whatever life energy remains from their corpses. After Lily manages to befriend Death, Baron becomes paranoid that she will leave him and tries to take steps to ensure she doesn't. When Lily does escape and is taken in by a group of survivors, Baron Tetch and the afterdead attack them and capture Lily, Baron first taking prisoner one member who he tortures, then draining her life energy. When the survivors attack to save Lilith, the ensuing battle sees most of them killed. Egotistical, depraved and with delusions of godhood, Baron Tetch intended to build his own empire of the undead and felt he was greater than even Death.
And here's his original effortpost.
Now, Tetch is indeed an awful, awful piece of work, and actually has a couple extra nasty crimes that the write-up doesn't mention, but something that was neglected to be mentioned in the original write-up is that Tetch has a rather....crappy backstory.
See, Tetch was one of several children who were taken under the care of Steven Addison, who claimed he was helping to find a cure for their supposed zombie infection. In reality, Addison turned the children into his personal guinea pigs for experiments in zombie-fication and whatnot.
Tetch was no exception. When he was just thirteen, Tetch was routinely stabbed and poked with needles, force fed magical dirt and mud in an attempt to turn him into a zombie, and, in one notable case, was bashed in the head, strapped down, and terrorized by Addison into forcing the boy to believe that he had died and gone to Hell. Tetch wet his pants from the ordeal, and became deeply affected by the idea that he had done something so wrong that he nearly went to Hell.
When he was fifteen, Tetch did indeed kill Addison....because Addison was about to drive a stake into his brain and lobotomize him.
The issue here is that, by adulthood, Tetch really doesn't show any tragic, sad, or fearful memories of his time under Addison's torment, and he really has no redeeming features about him, but I do think that this is something that needs (And should have been when he was first proposed) to be addressed.
Tetch spent two years underneath the torment of a psychopath, and promptly snapped and became the monster he is today. Nothing before his described "snap" presented him as anything but a normal—if morbidly curious—child, so....thoughts?
edited 11th Jan '18 12:47:17 PM by Ravok
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
You know what? Cut Tetch. I really, really have no trouble believing that sort of treatment really screwed him up as a result.
Yes to Oikawa and Zykan.
Ravok: I'm... not really sure how I feel about Tetch in light of your new info. Usually I'm willing to upvote villains like him who have been traumatized since hardcore villainy like his tends to go above and beyond most reasonable excuses... but what happened to him is beyond horrible. I feel that I'm leaning towards cutting him, but I'm not really comfortable casting a solid vote since I feel that this is a case where I should read the books and see for myself if his excuse holds water. Which, judging by your reaction, I'm probably better off not doing if the books are crappy. :^y
EDIT: Eh, you know what? I'll trust my judgement and say to cut Tetch.
edited 11th Jan '18 1:22:16 PM by FriedWarthog
....Yeah.
Cut Tetch like now.
Goku Black
Yeah I think cutting Tetch is fine. That sounds beyond awful for somome to go through and him being messed up seems really expected if not understandable.
Though I'm curious what are the issues with the other 2 CM's are ?
edited 11th Jan '18 1:03:21 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."
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Ditto . And good lord, makes me wonder if we erred in rejecting Addison.
Cut Tetch
edited 11th Jan '18 1:09:35 PM by ReynTime250
RIP Toriyama
@ACW: Nah, I'd still say Addison doesn't quite make it....Tetch alone is far worse than he is, and while Tetch is a product of Addison's evil, it wasn't intentional on Addison's part. Addison was just delving in experimenting on children with a vague goal of raising an Eldritch Abomination, which in this 'verse, isn't extremely end-all villainy.
While I'll probably bring up my issues with the other two listed baddies, I'll note that they're not nearly as disqualifying as my issues with Tetch, they're just things I want to bring up now that I've read the books and have a firmer grasp on what the crap is going on in them.
edited 11th Jan '18 1:32:53 PM by Ravok
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
" Addison was just delving in experimenting on children with a vague goal of raising an Eldritch Abomination, which in this 'verse, isn't extremely end-all villainy."
Yikes.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
No to Hikawa. I saw the post this morning but I didn't comment because I had to leave out. He never struck me as particularly heinous in Nocturne, and Chiaki looked ans felt more evil than him overtime.
edited 11th Jan '18 1:27:38 PM by VeryMelon
