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
Oh boy, so, let us do this re-examination.
Piella Bakewell, does she count?
Arguments against; work is not conductive towards having a CM, played for laughs.
Arguments for; work is conductive for a CM, crimes are played seriously.
So, let us examine this.
Is Wallace and Gromit conductive enough for a CM?
Wallace and Gromit is an animation which is primarily comedic in nature, however it has dealt with some dark stuff before. Case in point, A Close Shave is one of the darkest shorts around, but A Matter of Loath and Death is darker. A Close Shave deals with Gromit being framed for sheep rustling, A Matter if Loath and Death deals with a serial killer murdering bakers for petty revenge. Wallace and Gromit can get very dark at times, again, A Close Shave.
How seriously is Piella played up?
Piella does have comedic moments at the start, but from her introduction, it is made clear that there is something more to her than what we have seen. Her abuse of Fluffles is never played for laughs at all and is closer to a realistic depiction of child abuse than animal abuse. Piella threatens Fluffles life more than a few times in the short, and by the end, she outright strikes her dog after holding her hostage and threatening to kill her if Wallace doesn’t do as she says. This is definitely pretty bad for Wallace and Gromit.
Her crimes are never played for laughs and shown to be utterly horrifying as they would be in real life. Her motivation is, as we know, revenge on bakers for reasons which are we own fault, something real life serial killers have done.
Is Piella herself played for laughs? At times yes, but it steadily becomes more she is funny and more her getting comeuppance in some way is played for laughs. By the end, she isn’t being played for laughs anymore, save for that final battle with Fluffles. However, that final battle, while a homage to Aliens, is still a form of Piella receiving the comeuppance she rightly deserves for her heartless abuse of Fluffles.
She is terrifying by the end when she tries to kill Wallace herself.
Overall, Piella is played just seriously to count.
She has a body count of twelve innocent bakers. Yes, she uses a rolling pin as a weapon, but she kills with that weapon in the opening. She uses it as a club.
I will do more later, but for now, class needs my attention.
Good thing this class is Rhetoric, eh?
edited 12th Feb '18 1:05:31 PM by Vampireandthen
Please allow me to introduce myself, I am a man of wealth and taste. Nice to meet you, hope you can guess my name.You know what, I'll go ahead and throw my hat in and say 'Cut" Piella. Upon first rewatch of the film, I was pretty much just unsure, but I think upon further review she can't really be played THAT horribly due to the very nature of the movie being comedic. She fights her dog in an Alien-style ripoff, gets eaten alive because she's too fat to keep a blimp floating, and is just all-around more of a caricature of a vicious serial killer than an actually horrible, vile villain.
Anywho, time for my write-ups" I have no other candidates for now and—
Um.
Hrrrrrmmmm....
Something feels weird...
Oh. That's right... I forgot...How silly of me. I have another candidate. Another Marvel-related baddie for this batch....having found one or two Keeps from Batman fan films, I extended my search, and loe and behold...I found this awesome fellow.
What's the work?
Killgrave: The Purple Man
is a 2014 Marvel Comics Fan Film by Watchworks Studios.
Created as a sort-of build-up to the Jessica Jones Netflix series, the film is a meager five minutes in length, however our smooth-talking baddie gets up to quite a bit in those few minutes...
Who is he?
Zebediah Killgrave, better known as the Purple Man, is the main antagonist of the film. A suave, sharply-dressed supervillain with the ability to force people to do whatever he orders them to, Killgrave is currently being hunted by our protagonist Nick Bendis, however unbeknownst to Nick, he's not in actuality the hunter...
What has he done?
Killgrave opens the film by ordering a woman to leap to her death from a high-rise building. As the story progresses, we learn over radio broadcasts and our detective hero's talking that Killgrave has been terrorizing the city for awhile now, and most recently has had a waiter stab a coworker to death before doing the same to himself.
As Nick tries to explain his theories about the legendary "Purple Man" to his partner Dave, Killgrave himself appears, giddily ordering Dave to shoot himself in the head and brushing it off as him just being a "side character."
Revealing to Nick that he has been following him around and turning him and his wife and child into his slaves over the past week, always ordering them to forget about him each time, Killgrave smugly unveils that just the last time he visited, he had Nick brutally murder his own wife and child daughter, and forced him to enjoy it.
Ordering Nick to look back on his murder of his family and be ''happy"' about it, Killgrave then gives Nick one final order: Track down Jessica Jones, Killgrave"s Arch-Enemy, inform her Killgrave is coming for her next, then kill himself in front of her.
The film ends with Killgrave waltzing off as Nick runs to finds Jessica then kill himself, and Killgrave does his trademark signature from the comics by breaking the fourth wall and informing the audience that ominous music is about to play before the screen cuts to black. Both of which proceed to happen.
Freudian Excuse or other redeeming features?
Besides his charming good looks and great personality? None. Killgrave does what he wants when he wants, and that's just the way he likes it.
Heinousness?
The film takes place in no established canon, so Killgrave only has himself to compete with. And with that in mind, he easily clears. All of his crimes are onscreen, either blatantly or through Gory Discretion Shot, except the waiter incident, and even that is given a hellton of build-up and dialogue to it and fits with Killgrave's pattern. For a one-shot villain who only has five minutes to be evil, Killgrave clears with flying colors.
Final Verdict?
I'd say Keep this handsome devil!
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!
to Kilgrave. Going to have to say
to Piella.
Assuming the new Piella discussion started here
, we currently have 6 people who think she should be cut and 2 people who think she should be kept. I assume Knack2baby is currently an abstain?
edited 12th Feb '18 1:24:08 PM by dragonfire5000
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Again, I am unsure. I have not watched the film in awhile but I remember that she is utterly insane. As in so insane that I did not think of her as anything more than crazy. Her motivation is ludicrous and unless she was crazy beforehand I cannot imagine anyone being like this. All her crimes are treated seriously but I never thought of her as anything more than a lunatic. Like how the book by Bentley little life with father had the father who was completely insane and depraved? The problem Piella has is whether or not her insanity is treated with enough seriousness.
edited 12th Feb '18 1:34:10 PM by Knack2baby
When she went up (and I didn’t give my input either way because I hadn’t seen it), I planned to see it myself so I could experience her. I’ll try to see it soon to give my thoughts. That way I can have a part in whether or not Piella stays.
EDIT: I checked and I can watch it for free on Prime (as well as the other three shorts)! Sweet!
edited 12th Feb '18 1:37:07 PM by futuremoviewriter

I'll
Piella as well.