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've been waiting to see Ghaul being EP and I'm more than happy to give him a
Also
to Wat and Red Skull.
I'm going to abstain on Lore for the moment
My sandbox of EPs and other stuffHow much more do we need? This is a clear cut "willing to overlook mitigating qualities because he's really bad" case for keeping. He's a cut, so let's cut him.
Bad agency and potential redeeming qualities? It sucks the guy's gotta go, but he's gotta go.
edited 25th Jan '18 2:18:06 PM by Lightysnake
Lightysnake: I'm kind of insulted that you think that I'm intentionally ignoring Lore's agency problems due to how bad of a person he is. That's not the case. At all. I don't particularly have any strong feelings for him either way: I didn't give his programming much thought and it slipped my mind: I haven't watched his arc in a while.
I'd lean towards a cut, but I really want to see what Overlord has to say before finalizing it since he's the big Trek guy.
Been reading the Lore debate, and I wasn't going to weigh in due to my own lack of knowledge of the work. But considering the points that have neen brought up, I'm leaning cut. Agency seems extremely questionable, based on the arguments presented. I'm open to an EP to clear things up, though.
edited 25th Jan '18 2:56:40 PM by JoeBlitz
"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."
Thank you. One of my favorite Complete Monsters from one of my favorite works.
The thing is human memory is not perfect and I admit to forgetting about the agency issue with Lore, I have not re watched all of TNG in the past few years. That may be a big issue here, I will say Lore understands morality enough to be manipulative and can hide his true nature from others until he is ready to strike (he also deactivated Data's ethics program to make him into a psychopath), but that may not be enough for him to have real agency, I would have to re watch the episodes to make a proper determination.
But let's face it, no one is perfect and people will make mistakes on this thread, there is no shame in that and I do not think that deserves harsh criticism.
edited 25th Jan '18 2:55:10 PM by Overlord
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You have a defense for your stance? It's one thing to want to keep a villain up because there's still some contestable factors, but it seems like you're leaning to a keep on personal preference even in spite of very, very clear disqualifiers. I don't want to force you to vote one way or anything, but voting to keep a villain solely on feeling without factoring in criteria isn't how this works.
Does Briggs have enough votes? And if so, just put him at the end of the Lit section on the page?
Also, for Skull, he probably has enough votes (11 plus myself), but more are always welcome. BTW, the nuking of Detroit and the camps for the "deviants"? Not offscreen
◊.
edited 25th Jan '18 3:26:08 PM by ACW
As I've discussed with both beforehand? Easy 'Yes' to Skull and Wat Tambor. Cut Lore.
Speaking of Lazarevic, I've got an image of him to suggest for Image Links...Here's two so as to see which one is better:
And while I'm at it, here's possible ones that are updates to the image of Donald Pierce suggested by MenInGrayToBlack:
Thoughts?
edited 25th Jan '18 3:51:10 PM by Ravok
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!I second AC Ws opinion on Ravok's images
edited 25th Jan '18 4:00:21 PM by G-Editor
My sandbox of EPs and other stuff

I noticed the Lore discussion over the page. I've read the link back to the original discussion and I've read the current CM write-up.
Lore doesn't count as a CM. The big problem with him isn't whether or not we should weigh up whether he genuinely cares for either Dr. Soong or Data or his Alas, Poor Villain fate against the monstrous deeds he committed during his existence. His problem is agency.
Something went wrong with his design. His programming went wrong, leaving him twisted. Dr. Soong explains that he couldn't figure out what the error was or how to fix it. In the end, the simplest solution was to shut down Lore and create Data. He claims he spent the rest of his life wondering what had gone wrong in Lore's design.
Lore did not have emotions, although he had a basic mimicry of some very simple emotion-esque patterns; his broken programming did therefore sometimes make it seem as though he did. When Dr. Soong created an emotion chip, he created only one, for Data. Dr. Soong did apologise to Lore and told him that, had he known Lore had been reactivated, he'd have created an emotion chip for Lore, too. As it was, the chip he did create was not designed to handle Lore's programming and Dr. Soong warned that would not work correctly for him. Lore stole it anyway. Combine an incompatible emotion chip with broken programming and a flawed design, and you end with the twisted, unstable android Lore.
His agency is a huge issue due to the problem being a design flaw that was impossible to correct and which made it impossible for him to ever be an integrated, well-adjusted, stable member of society. Since even his creator couldn't fix him, there were only two solutions: de-activating him or destroying him.
edited 25th Jan '18 1:52:06 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.