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
Sargeras... the logic gap I'll chalk up to bad writing but it seems way too likely the character is ultimately well-intentioned
There is an absolutely massive power gap between Sargeras and the other candidates, even the likes of Archimonde and Deathwing. While he is by far the most heinous character in Warcraft, he is also the most powerful.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
to Shinichiro, and Joe's example
to Timmy and I'll abstain on Segeras until I hear other peoples opinions.
Now here is my write-ups for Campbell and Father Hughes.
- Peaky Blinders
- Inspector Chester Campbell, originally assigned to recover the stolen guns from the Peaky Blinders, first comes into contact with the gang when he has his men terrorize a community under its protection before beating up gang member Arthur Shelby. When he learns that Arthur’s brother Thomas "Tommy" Michael Shelby is the leader, he makes his presence known to him by demanding the location of the stolen guns with the threat of death to him and family, including Tommy’s pregnant sister. Campbell later tortures and kills a subordinate of his when he questions his methods. Despite recovering the guns he becomes enraged when he learns that his mole, Grace actually fell in love with Tommy; he takes his rage out at a prostitute by brutally raping her. He later incites a gang war between the Peaky Blinders and a rival gang in hopes that Tommy dies, uncaring if innocents die, and attempts to kill Grace himself. Upon being promoted to Major, Campbell orchestrates an plan to have Tommy assassinate Henry Russell, and later burns a man alive under a pile of searing charcoal when he interferes. When Tommy deviates from Campbell’s plan he has Tommy’s brother and cousin thrown in jail and beaten up only releasing them if Tommy’s aunt Polly has sex with him; he later rapes Polly when she tries to back out. After Tommy assassinates the target, Campbell attempts to have Tommy executed once he had outlived his usefulness. While claiming to be fighting for justice, Campbell is nothing more than a Sadist, who abuses his authority to bully the weak.
- Father John Hughes, from Season 3, is a member of The Economic League and by far its most vile member. First appearing before Tommy after getting him arrested, Hughes tells him on how easy he can get to him and his family; something he makes clear when he along with his co-conspirators arranges for Tommy to be assassinated with his wife Grace Taking the Bullet for him. In retaliation, Tommy attempts to kill Hughes only for Hughes ordering his men to ambush and beat Tommy up to the point his skull gets crushed. He later has Tommy “apologize” for trying to kill him in front of the league before revealing himself to be a pedophile whose raped the children under his “care”; Tommy’s cousin, Micheal Gray being one of his victims. He then has Tommy blow up train full of innocents, so that he and the league could profit from its destruction. Should Tommy not do the deed, Hughes will rape and kill Tommy’s son whom he’s holding hostage.
BTW I enjoyed seeing all the reference to the director John Hughes. I guess Steven Knight having the director's name given to this Pedophile Priest is his very own Take That! on how John Hughes' Home Alone series progressively degenerated to the point Home Alone 3 simply flopped.
edited 3rd Feb '18 9:33:55 PM by G-Editor
My sandbox of EPs and other stuffIt is nice to get Sargeras out of the way. It's got be back in the mood to fool more effort posts. I have another Lone Wolf candidate to propose soon, and I still intend to propose Maghda from Diablo 3 sooner than later.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.Important spoilers for Gone:
Drake Merwin is a supporting antagonist in the sequel series. He somehow survived the fall of the FAYZ and lived as a hobo in a nearby national park for the next four years. During that time, he became a particularly violent Serial Killer; he murdered eighteen people, generally by slowly flaying them and then letting them bake to death in the sun, and is stated outright to have raped his female victims. As of the end of Monster, he is still alive. I think we might have more to add to his entry when the next book comes out (probably sometime this year).
Also, the Pale Queen is out of the drafts but not up on the main page. Is that normal?
edited 3rd Feb '18 10:29:51 PM by MetaBuu
Alright, all, I'm back! Thanks all for the well wishes — I'll be resuming to normal contribution from today onward.
Two orders of business for me tonight... firstly, to catch up? Yes to Dakki, Ravok's Digimon candidates, Hughes and Campbell. No to Sargeras.
Secondly? I've got another candidate of my own tonight.
What's the setting?
One I found shortly after I did Hitler's Madman, None Shall Escape is another Code-era Nazi film from 1944... actually a film that takes place after WWII despite the war not having closed until a year after the film was released, None Shall Escape tells the story of the conviction of a senior Nazi who committed a trove of crimes, related through the testimonies of those who lived through his cruelties. Our Nazi for the night is Wilhelm Grimm, played by Alexander Knox.
Who is Wilhelm Grimm? What has he done?
Wilhelm Grimm, the earliest we know about him, was a German schoolteacher in a Polish village called Litzbark who was sent to fight in WWI alongside his brother Karl, nearly losing his leg in the process. Grimm returns to Litzbark disillusioned and bitter... angry that Germany lost and more so that he's forced to return to teaching "provincial idiots" in a village he looks down upon, with seemingly his only reprieve being the beautiful young Polish woman Marja that he promised to marry before the war. Grimm's also developed a severe inferiority complex stemming over being a "cripple" which he feels affects his chances with Marja (who's really more put off by how much he's changed into a contemptuous asshole and resolves to marry him anyways after some time in Warsaw... reason that Grimm utterly fails to see). When one of the students of the school he used to teach at, Jan, taunts him over him not having a chance with Marja, Grimm snaps and decides to exact vengeance on the little brat... by raping the one young student who defended Grimm, Anna, driving her to suicide in the process, and throwing the blame on Jan.
The blame clears from Jan when Anna finds out Grimm is responsible, abandoning him in a fit of disgust. Although Jan gets back at Grimm by putting out his eye with a rock, Grimm isn't convicted for the rape due to insufficient evidence and he takes that chance to flee the country, utterly remorseless for the deed... seeking refuge with Karl and his family. Throughout the following years, Grimm becomes enamored with the Nazi Party and ends up joining them, imploring Karl's son and his nephew Willi — named after Grimm himself — to join the Nazis' youth groups as he sees strength in the young boy. When the Party is outlawed, Grimm hides and has Willi turn away the attention of the authorities, rewarding the young boy with a swastika. Shortly after Hitler comes to power, Karl decides to leave for Vienna to escape the increasing heat. Still concerned for his brother, Karl tries to motivate Grimm into coming with by threatening to reveal he had a part in the Reichstag fire... upon which Grimm promptly sells out his own brother to be sent to the concentration camps, taking Willi to indoctrinate the kid into becoming a fanatical Nazi under his direct supervision.
Eventually, WWII kicks out... and this is where Grimm really hits his stride. Grimm, now Reichskommissar of western Poland, starts overseeing the deportation of thousands to extermination, seeing countless people sent to the camps by the trainload and sentencing hundreds of young Polish women to German officer clubs for "recreational purposes" (i.e. sex slavery). Not content with facilitating the mass destruction of human lives and destroying entire families, Grimm decides to exact revenge against the one place from his early days he always felt slighted by... Litzbark. Grimm returns to Litzbark and immediately has the Nazis occupy the village, strong-arming the village's priests into giving him a full tally of people suitable for the camps and forced prostitution, terrorizing and mocking Marja while ordering the books of her students burned, and doing his best to find the now-grown, defiant Jan with all the implied intention of exacting his vengeance personally on him. Willi is now a lieutenant at his side, groomed into an obedient Nazi whom Grimm treats as his own son. Doesn't stop Willi from falling in love with Marja's daughter, Janina, to which Grimm does not approve.
One especially notable scene towards the end of the film? Rounding up countless people from Litzbark to be deported amid a rather noisy protest, Grimm tiredly orders one of the local rabbi to shut the masses up. The rabbi tells them to protest and rebel, instead... upon which Grimm orders his soldiers to massacre all of them with a machine gun, coldly overseeing every single person fatally gunned down while casually shooting the rabbi dead himself. Tiring of Willi's continued compassion as he oversees the harsh labor Grimm's sentenced so many innocents to, Grimm decides to cut off the one human attachment he has by sending Janina into prostitution in the "officer's club," dismissing her and the entire Polish people as slaves and inferior animals. Surprise, surprise, Janina doesn't take it well and ends up murdered... crushing Willi and prompting him to strip off his Nazi medals and suit before trying to pray for her soul. Grimm? Shoots him in the back and kills him.
So... a year later, the Nazis lose. Grimm loses his prestigious position, the few people who have survived his torments — his brother Karl who's mercifully taken from the camps after years of experiencing horrid slavery and torture because of his brother — and Grimm is put on trial. Throughout it all, Grimm rebukes the testimonies of his victims as mere "gossip" and ending the film furiously raving that the Nazis will rise again, with his ultimate conviction left unstated but heavily implied to be as heavy as can be passed.
Any mitigating factors?
Okay, so... Grimm sort of starts out with semi-redeeming qualities. He has a fairly believable inferiority complex about his injuries in the war, is frustrated partly out of what he feels is Germany's dignity having been trampled on, states he loves Marja as the only human being he does love after returning from the war, and is implied to have been a much better person before the war. Even these have a few problems in the form of some tendencies that become much, much more pronounced when Grimm becomes a Nazi. Mainly? Grimm is a selfish man who takes frustration less with Germany being disgraced and more the fact that in the process, he gets none of the luxuries he was promised as a result ("I was promised a post in the Ministry of Education! An official mansion, with servants and cars... I would have had position, responsibility...") while openly showing disgust towards the Polish people, especially those of Litzbark, who — aside from a few lingering anti-German sentiments that really only seem prominent among the younger children of the village (whom Grimm dismisses from the start) — still treat him with the exact same kind of compassion they gave him when he was still a teacher, openly accepting him even in spite of his heritage and his injuries.
Grimm's entire crusade against Litzbark comes off less as him being genuinely disgraced or humiliated by the village and more a whiny, self-important "poor me" vendetta against people who were nothing but nice to him, solely because he looks down on all of them, Marja included, as "peasants" and filth. Any sort of human compassion Grimm could have is undermined when, to get revenge on an impudent kid who insults him, rapes the girl who defended him to place the blame on Jan without ever showing a lick of remorse for the deed.
By the time Grimm becomes a Nazi, Grimm's happily and willingly allowed these selfish, monstrous attributes of his personality to take over and has excised any vestige of redeeming qualities he may have once had, openly dismissing human feeling as a luxury that he can't afford nor cares about, while prosecuting countless people under the weak guise of Just Following Orders but more to assuage his long-wounded pride and take out his rage on people he's always seen as inferior. Grimm cares nothing for his son as anything except an extension of his name and murders him when he deviates from the path Grimm laid out for him, destroys any positive relationship he might have had with Marja or Karl, and ends the film as an unrepentant Nazi who's ruined thousands of lives out of pride, petty egomania, and sadism. The film makes it explicitly clear from the get-go that Grimm is a monster who chose his own path rather than being just a product of his environment or the Nazi regime, and at the end of it, nothing more than the absolute perfect representation of the evil of the Nazi Party.
Conclusion?
Grimm is one of the worst characters I have ever seen from a Code-era film, if not the worst. He's a rapist, a murderer, a Nazi who has countless women sent to sex slavery and countless more destroyed in the camps, a man who sends his own brother to a concentration camp and kills his own surrogate son, and one who ends utterly unrepentant of it all. Easy, easy keep.
Thoughts?
edited 4th Feb '18 3:11:08 AM by Scraggle
slight to Shinichiro upon sleeping on it as the fact he deso it ib front of them is just enough and Joe's example, Grimm
Timmy and Sargeras
Also happy to see you back Scraggle.
edited 4th Feb '18 12:07:12 AM by miraculous
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Good to have you back, Scraggle. An easy
to Grimm.
Write-up time...
- Cut, Shoot, Kill (2017)
- Edward Shipman is the executive producer of director Alabama Chapman's horror films, and the true instigator of the carnage. Obsessed with injecting "realism" into his movies, Shipman has Chapman and his goons murder their actors on camera, and is responsible for the deaths of dozens as a result. In the past, he grew jealous of Chapman's relationship with his lead actress Nicole Heally, and lashed out by raping Nicole, and then having her tortured on camera, culminating in her suicide. He keeps his lackies in line by threatening to expose their activities to the police, believing himself to be untouchable due to his vast fortune. He laughs at footage of the murder of one of his actresses, calling it "great", and later kidnaps another one to be his personal Sex Slave. Despite never killing anyone directly, Edward Shipman is nevertheless an utterly repugnant psychopath with the blood of countless innocents on his hands.
- The sociopathic Walter stands out as the only one of Chapman's cronies to completely lack any redeeming qualities. Always cast as the deranged killer in Chapman's movies, Walter carries out the murders for the films, torturing and dismembering the hapless actors for fun. He's responsible for torturing Nicole Heally on the aforementioned Edward Shipman's orders, driving her to commit suicide. Going all out for his feature film debut, Walter stabs Chloe to death, cuts off the limbs of Francis and leaves him to slowly die a torturous death, murders an investigating policeman, and forces Candice to inject herself with a drug of his own invention that Mind Rapes her into becoming Shipman's personal sex toy. When the murder of another actor ends in the death of one of his fellow crew members, Walter is completely indifferent, demonstrating that he has no value for anything other than his own sick enjoyment.
edited 4th Feb '18 1:29:53 AM by JoeBlitz
"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."
Hello, I am new to posting on this forum but have been following it for awhile and know all the rules and such. Anyways as someone who has learned everything about blizzard's games from the story and lore to the gameplay, I have to say yes to sargeras, and I have two good reasons why in that minor but critical details not mentioned in the ep are possibly enough to erase doubts about him. I guess you could say "I was prepared". Anyone interested in hearing them? Again, as I said I think these two reasons not mentioned are just enough I believe.
edited 4th Feb '18 1:57:34 AM by Knackisback
Alright, so after a thorough analysis of the nature of how genuine sargeras' intentions are, I believe his crusade against the void is null due to my first reason which is the felhounds of sargeras, in the Legion dungeon journal which is effectively a series of mini lore stories, it is stated that these two are prized by sargeras as weapons, not so much as pets. The reason I am telling you this is because one of the pets shatug? Is infused by the void and like lore said sargeras does utilize the void in his demons but this explicitly explains that the relationship sargeras has with the void is that he is not using it to fight fire with fire but more because he values it as a weapon. There was a similar case with Imran zakhaev in that he said his "blood" was spilled is not necessary to interpret as good because it is not clear. This I think though makes a difference but I still have one more reason which I think explains sargeras' endgame, and it is in antorus itself.
I might as well say the other reason now. At the end of antorus we see sargeras smother azeroth, however simultaneously the heroes are fighting Argus and towards the end of the fight Argus is commanded by sargeras to unleash an attack strong enough to wipe out everything that is not sargeras and azeroth being that sargeras is shielding them in cloud form. In other words, his endgame IS to wipe out life but just so he can lust for azeroth forever and shows he cares more about himself and not being affected by the void lords, not because he wants to defend life but because he is afraid of the same thing happening to him that happened to that world soul he cleaved in half. That is what I found this to be.
One more post for tonight. Moving onto Valiant Comics with Lighty after:
What's the setting?
Danger Club from Landry Walker (Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade, The Incredibles comics, Batman: Brave and the Bold... needless to say this one is pretty different from his usual child-friendly fare) is a limited comic book series that I think is trying to tell some sort of symbolic message about the transition from the Silver Age into the Dark Age of comics. Essentially, Danger Club? Is a team of kid superheroes, sidekicks, and apprentices that band together to defend a futuristic Earth after all of the world's heroes and villains disappear during a mission to stop an unknown force from attacking Earth. The series is grim, confusing, and unusually metaphysical... the cosmic force the Danger Club is supposed to defeat? Chronos.
Who is Chronos? What has he done?
Chronos is a "Titan," an ancient, immortal being of myth who exists outside of the universe. Chronos has been playing with all reality and manipulating it to his will for as long as reality's existed. See, there's supposed to be an infinite amount of alternating Earths in a state of flux, but... due to Chronos? There aren't. Heavily implied to have twisted and annihilated the homeworld of the Olympians, Chronos has corrupted and consumed Earth seemingly an infinite amount of times before and gradually shaped reality into a hell-pit due to each new reality overtaking the next, creating a perpetual cycle of war, suffering, and death in which billions are twisted into "sick parodies" of who they once were before being annihilated, only to be recreated and restarted all over again.
All of this? Chronos is doing to twist Earth into a world where he is worshiped absolutely... giving him enough power to break free of his prison and utterly destroy the multiverse itself and all existing life within, all for the purpose of ascending to his ideal of perfection. In the grim reality on Earth he's created through countless reboots through his manipulations, Chronos drove the world's greatest hero, the American Spirit, to insanity, and massacred all the world's heroes and villains through him before turning Earth into a dystopia. Most of the comic is spent fighting American Spirit while coming to the gradual realization that something is very, very wrong, which ends with Kid Vigilante's... supposed death, only for his (deceased) father to give him the knowledge of the Olympians — and thus, of Chronos.
Having eventually restarted the world to a point where it's just a barren, hellish wasteland with the disembodied souls of everyone suspended and forced to give tribute to Chronos, finally giving him the strength to awaken. With the newly-resurrected heroes, however, Kid Vigilante and the others manage to fight off against him, using the incantation of Apocastasis to restore the world to how it was. Pissed, Chronos manifests in the new reality and still tries to decimate it, brushing off the heroes' attempts to kill or even harm him with ease... only for the Olympians to finally get their shit together and combine their power, unleashing a very colorful burst of energy that destroys a screaming Chronos and restores the world to how it first was with the release of all the souls and worlds Chronos has devoured.
Any mitigating factors?
Alright, so this comic is... confusing and vaguely explained in places, but Chronos? Doesn't have a lick of a redeeming quality anywhere. It would be so easy to just write Chronos as more of a force than a character, and indeed, Chronos' character isn't really rich, but he's far from a GDV. Chronos explicitly twists reality itself into a nightmare out of a lust for cruelty and an insatiable hunger for death, all ultimately for the purpose of becoming even more powerful that it already is at the expense of literally all life. Chronos is the epitome of selfish, sadistic egomania and the comic treats it as more a vile, evil monster more than just a cosmic force, with every indication it has full agency to do what it does as well.
Chronos obviously goes well, well beyond the heinous standard, too. What he lacks in personal cruelty? Chronos acts on a scale that I think blows literally every single candidate I've put up, even the Squid Queen, on how many worlds this thing affects; Chronos corrupts and destroys billions of people essentially an infinite amount of times all for the sake of power-lust. That's... pretty bad.
Conclusion?
Not a great comic, but Chronos? I think a keeper.
Thoughts?
edited 4th Feb '18 3:04:37 AM by Scraggle
