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
Someone added Melissandre to Game of Thrones. I took the liberty of removing that example, as it it seems to be a kneejerk reaction to the current arc.
I also removed Dagmer Cleftjaw from that page. A quick search showed that we haven't really discussed him that much.
edited 2nd Apr '13 3:52:44 PM by lrrose
Queen And Country seems like comic. Gorgon: seems like he might be a qualifier.
Found this on the TV page, if nothing else it's a zero content example. I don't anything about this character, but it's not giving much to make me think he's this trope:
Shane Casey borderlines this on CSI: NY, primarily after realizing his brother was actually guilty and starting to torment Danny and Lindsay.
Also, I'm debating if the Gormogon killer from bones should be on there, I think all his murders are Offscreen Villainy unless you count the bodies being found. We might think about removing him
edited 2nd Apr '13 7:25:14 PM by shoboni
To continue, from the music section, should Maxwell's Silver hammer be here when the song is pretty much played for Black Comedy?
And in video games, can we really count anyone form GTA consider it's borderline Humans Are Bastards?
The entry for Gormogon mentions that he himself is hardly ever seen, so I doubt his killings are. As I don't watch the show, the only other thing I know about him is that one of the main characters was randomly revealed to be working for him as a contrived excuse for the actor to leave the show, or something.
edited 2nd Apr '13 8:04:41 PM by HamburgerTime
That said, I think showing bodies of murder victims counts as a Gory Discretion Shot.
Regarding "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", characters in a Black Comedy are easy cuts, as far as CM status goes. Came up several times back in the 200 page range with a few, including Invader Zim.
edited 2nd Apr '13 8:35:02 PM by Nohbody
All your safe space are belong to TrumpI think that many sub-pages still have examples from a time when it was not required for them to go through this thread. Fixing them is a difficult and long process, because you need people who are willing to have a look at the whole work.
Cutting all un-discussed examples and have fans interested it the show bring it up later is one option. But I guess it's probably preferable to leave it on the page as is and have somebody argue for or against it. And I'm too new to this thread anyway.
That said, I'm willing to participate in this effort. It seems this thread works really well and quickly.
The topic and the trope must be appealing.
RE: Djin: That looks really and truly awful. I'm inclined to say yes.
RE: "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". Cut.
RE: Police procedurals: Bones and CSI: I am all for cutting them. Best if we could get people who watch the shows and knows them in-depth so that they could argue about it.
Also concerning Monster.Live Action TV, I plan to bring up The X Files very soon. Some of the examples are plain bad.
edited 2nd Apr '13 9:25:41 PM by XFllo
I watch CSI, and added several of these examples. I'll run them by y'all.
- Klinefelds: Keep, possibly the most Nightmare Fuel-inducing characters on the show. I actually added this (and started the section) after learning my mother, who's also a fan, refuses to watch their episode due to how awful they are.
- Gang: Cut for being a group.
- Collinses: Cut the mother and brothers, they're just accessory. I could see keeping the dad though, as he gets a Rape Discretion Shot. On the other hand, he's an entirely Posthumous Character.
- Haskell: Cut, given a Freudian Excuse (namely, his dad was even worse than him, killed his mom and made him listen to her screams) in the episode he dies.
- Gedda: Cut, he does nothing out of the ordinary for his line of work.
- Dimasa: Didn't see his last episode, but something happened there with his dad, too; Freudian Excuse?
- Gabriel: I'd actually keep her, though I can't really describe why. She's utterly brutal and has no regard for anyone.
- McKeen: Ooh, I really want to keep him, but... he came back later on and it was revealed he loved his son (who was admittedly also his Dragon).
edited 2nd Apr '13 9:39:43 PM by HamburgerTime
Oh, I forgot, if the examples did run through this already, I'll keep quiet. I play by the rules. :-)
All right, I read those examples, and the couple will give me nightmares just from reading it. They are a definite keep in my book. I must think a bit about the others, but I'll probably end up agreeing with you as you seem to know it really well. The series Big Bads might need some elaboration.
edited 2nd Apr '13 9:58:09 PM by XFllo
Time for some Highlander clean up..
- The TV series of Highlander had quite a few evil immortals
- Early villain Felicia Martins appears at first to be a Damsel in Distress, a young Immortal on run from the run from the brutal, obsessed Claude Deveraux. It is revealed that Martins is far older than she claims and Deveraux is hunting her because Martins murdered his wife and their adopted baby daughter. This is her MO: she ingratiates herself into the lives of her victims and murders everything they love, making it so they're off their game and she can easily take their heads. She attempts to murder hero Duncan Macleod's loved ones after she takes Deveraux's head and is last seen vowing to return and murder who Duncan loves after he spares her
- Kalas, the Big Bad of the third season is an ancient Immortal who was previously a monk who helped his teacher run a sanctuary on holy ground for Immortals. Kalas, however, used the sanctuary to murder Immortals by ambushing them as they left. After Macleod exposed him and his teacher banished him forever, Kalas vowed revenge. He later attempted to murder a young singer after only suspecting Macleod was involved with her in the 1920s, and when he returned in the 90s, he systematically laid out a web to destroy everyone close to Macleod after murdering his old teacher, Brother Paul. Kalas shows no hesitation in torturing and murdering innocent people, destroying the live of anyone remotely associated with Macleod. At the end, he is willing to reveal the secrets of Immortals at large to world and throw everything into chaos if Macleod doesn't offer his head.
- Kern of the episode Line Of Fire is described by his watcher as an 'animal,' who rapes, kills and steals as he will. Kern in the past was a scout for American forces who loves killing Native Americans. He earned Macleod's enmity when he helped slaughter the Sioux village Macleod was living with and presented Duncan with the scalps he had taken. Kern has no remorse in taking an innocent young woman and baby hostage to gain and advantage and happily describes the crimes he has committed over the centuries when confronted.
- Ernst Daimler is the only Immortal seen who's a former Nazi. A firm believer in fascism, Daimler sought to help 'purge' all lower races in World War 2 and ordered the slaughter of hundreds of innocent people, as well as wounded prisoners, until he was stopped by a young boy who stabbed him in the back. Thinking he was dead, the boy and his cousin wrapped Daimler in chains and threw him into the Seine where he remained for decades. In the present, Daimler leads a white supremacist movement and finds the little boy who stabbed him, now a kindly old priest. Daimler gleefully guns him down after terrifying him off holy ground, and then attempts to murder a pregnant woman who tried to stop him before Macleod intervenes and takes Daimler's head.
- Kronos, an Immortal whose legacy of death dates to the Bronze Age. Kronos was the leader of the Four Horsemen, a band of Immortals who led armies to Rape, Pillage, and Burn across continents. Kronos was the most sadistic of all of them, slaughtering the innocent and raping who he desired, including a slave girl for no other reason than his sworn brother Methos had taken a liking to her. In the present, Kronos recruits Methos, now The Atoner, back into a scheme to reunite the Horsemen and create a plague to destroy all of humanity, viewing himself as the end of time itself.
edited 2nd Apr '13 10:33:47 PM by Lightysnake
Speaking about write-ups - Star Trek TNG Data and Kivas might need improvement regarding Example Indentation.
Perhaps like this? (Using entries from the page and lrrose's post)
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Data's brother Lore is a thoroughly unsympathetic android who kills his creator, reprograms his brother to follow his every command, and threatens to set teenage Wesley on fire. He summoned the Crystalline Entity to his creator's colony when the other colonists petitioned Noong to deactivate him out of fear that he would turn on them, and since then, he's been on quest to wipe out all organic life from the universe. If he ever shows affection, it's just to manipulate Data into collaborating. He also tried to make the Borg an even greater threat to The Federation than they already were. Given everything else we saw of his true nature, it's obvious that he mostly did it for his own sick amusement.
- Kivas Fajo, the villain from "The Most Toys". A Collector of the Strange who wants to add Data, the only known android in the galaxy, to his collection. To do this, he poisons the water supply of an inhabited planet so he can capture him. He treats people and sentient beings like property. Then he talks very matter-of-factly about how he'd like to try out a particularly cruel Death Ray called a Varon-T Disruptor — illegal in The Federation because of how it slowly and painfully destroys the body from the inside out. He later does use it on his girlfriend, who is really more of a broken, codependent slave.
- I'm not sure that the quote and “The Reason You Suck” Speech mentioned at the page are necessary to be included.
- No spoiler tags as it's fairly old.
- I wrote the name as Kivas Fajo, which is how imdb lists him.
edited 3rd Apr '13 12:26:57 PM by XFllo
And if that's not too late, I'd actually like to vote for keeping Alexis ¨from Star Trek DS 9.
Example as it's written:
- Alexis from Paradise. She is, first off a complete hypocrite, praising a 'no-technology' life style while using advanced technology to keep her people from contacting the outside universe. Secondly, she lets people die to keep the illusion that 'no technology is better' even though O'Brien or Sisko could get a modern medical kit to treat the dying. Third: she institutionalizes torture for minor offenses, throwing people into a hot box for stealing candles. When Sisko doesn't break to her authority, she tortures him showing what she's probably done to ALL the colonists, and then she sent her devoted son to kill O'brien so he'd never get off the world. She's also an infuriating Karma Houdini, the people stay in her 'community' since they've developed Stockholm Syndrome, and the Federation prison she's going to will treat her FAR better than she treated her own damn people.
- I admit I haven't seen the episode itself, but I follow SF Debris and his reviews, and he called her one of the worst villains ever of the entire franchise, and he's always most accurate. (I am such a fan girl of his, sorry ;-)) I am willing to research her character more. But she's a CM for me for now.
edited 3rd Apr '13 2:02:57 AM by XFllo

Getting back to the djjin, he kills people in truly horrible ways, in fact, the last two films show him skinning people alive. In the oppening of the first film, when an emperor wishes to be shown great sights, the Djin has people tortured and mutilated in front of the emperor, which is how he chose to interpret the wish. Another example would be when he crucifies a priest in the third film. He kills one man by turning his intestines into a monster and explode out of his stomach. He wants to unleash an army of other evil genies to take over the world, and after death, he sends his victims to a dimension for eternal torture, and, acording to the second fillm, he needs to do this to one thousand mortals. While he does want to unleash the other evil genies, he does not seem to actualy care for them, as he states in the last film that he plans to rule over the others, we know this because he tells the woman that he falls in love with, that if she accepts, she will be his second in command, meaning he plans to rule over the other genies. He traps one woman in a painting for all eternity, and turns another into a sentant but imobile statue for all eternity. While he does fall in love in the last film, he does tell the girl that if she does not love him back, he will have her sent to hell for eternal torture. I think he actualy tries to kill her at the end, though I could be wrong. Assuming I remember correctly, can a character still qualify after having fallen in love if they try to kill the persion they fell in love with later on?
edited 2nd Apr '13 2:38:13 PM by bobg
jjj