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Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

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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:

     Previous Post 
Complete Monster Cleanup Thread

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] 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

ANewMan A total has-been. Since: Apr, 2013 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A total has-been.
#151376: Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:02:50 PM

@Kylotrope: I covered in the post, Sora directly calls out that not only is what Xemnas is saying about Nobodies having no other choice in their course of actions a load of bunk, but also that the idea that Nobodies don't truly feel anything is in fact not true of all Nobodies - it's just true of Xemnas, as he isn't sad about anything because he is averse to feeling by choice. If he'd chosen to seek true companionship with others and open himself up to feeling, his Freudian Excuse of "feeling emptiness inside" would have been easily fixed, but he instead decided he'd rather have everything else in existence be reduced to emptiness while he reigned like a god in order to feel a sense of power and completeness. (Basically a spite-driven "I don't want to exist like everyone else, I want everyone else to exist like me" kind of deal.)

@The Immortal Angel Newton: What's funny is that the KH 1 and especially the Chain of Memories manga adaptations usually take things a lot less seriously in the game, with visual gags, more comedic depictions of events and characters, and Bathos popping up constantly, with just a few aspects still being serious, like Ansem as the Knight of Cerebus. But by the 358/2 Days and KHII manga, the author got a better grasp on how to balance the comedy with the drama and emotional sincerity, so those manga in particular are highly recommended.

[down] (Aside from some aspects that were tough to grasp, the series' overall narrative wasn't all that confusing until 3D, which lost even long-time fans of the series and, IMHO, completely broke canon as it were.)

Edited by ANewMan on Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:08:31 AM

FriedWarthog Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
#151377: Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:03:34 PM

Yes to Manga!Xemnas, (And as an aside, I never thought Kingdom Hearts' plot was really all that confusing and that it's more of a meme than anything)

Kylotrope Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it) from Honolulu Hawaii Since: Apr, 2018
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
#151378: Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:09:08 PM

@A New Man Understood.

Edited by Kylotrope on Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:09:44 AM

Things are really about to get Fun around here
ANewMan A total has-been. Since: Apr, 2013 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A total has-been.
#151379: Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:32:02 PM

Here's the writeup for Manga!Xemnas assuming he gets voted up, as he's got at least 12 votes in favor of him now.

Edited by ANewMan on Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:34:34 AM

UltimateDemonBeast65 Since: Feb, 2018
#151380: Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:54:36 PM

I was told go for more obscure and less popular media, so how about this 2016 horror film with an interesting take on demonic possession? See what you think.

Incarnate (2016 film): "Maggie" is a powerful Archdemon who developed an obsession with the medium Seth Ember after killing his family by possessing a truck driver and running them off the road, leading to Ember being confined into a wheelchair. In the present day, Maggie possesses the young boy Cameron and traps him in a Lotus-Eater Machine where the demon impersonates his father Dan, who left them after breaking the boy's arm while drunk. When Embers tries to fight the demon, he is overpowered and when they attempt to bring Dan in to save Cameron, Maggie sadistically attacks and mutilates him, only stopping after Ember pleads with the demon only for Dan to die from his injuries. When it feels like Ember has won, Maggie traps him in a dream, making him believe at first that his family survived and that the years of fighting demons were nothing but a delusion. When Ember finally traps Maggie inside of him, he attempts suicide by jumping out the window to end the demon, only for paramedics to revive him long enough for Maggie to possess the Vatican representative Camilla.

DemonDuckofDoom from Some Pond in Hell Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#151381: Feb 22nd 2019 at 7:57:16 PM

Please use the effortpost format like you did with Mundus.

AustinDR Lizzid people! (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Lizzid people!
#151382: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:04:02 PM

I've seen that movie...can't really see Maggie as a qualifier. While she was an asshole, the thing was that her primary motivation for preying on the son was largely so she wouldn't die. I. E. she is sadistic, but she is primarily motivated by necessity.

Edited by AustinDR on Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:04:37 AM

papyru30 from Colorado for summer break Since: Aug, 2016 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
#151383: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:22:51 PM

We've had characters count despite being motivated by self preservation. I think the fact that they're sadistic and enjoy what they do is what makes them count despite that motivation.

I won't vote until the character is proposed in the proper format.

Kylotrope Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it) from Honolulu Hawaii Since: Apr, 2018
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
#151384: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:23:46 PM

I don't quite find wanting to save your own life to INHERENTLY be a mitigating factor. It can come off as It's All About Me if it's played right, And if she is sadistic about it, I'm actually fairly confident she could count. Will wait on an EP to cast a vote though.

Edited by Kylotrope on Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:24:20 AM

Things are really about to get Fun around here
AustinDR Lizzid people! (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Lizzid people!
#151385: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:24:20 PM

True. I seem to recall the movie playing more in favor of the self-preservation, though. It's been a long time since I've seen the movie so I probably forgot some details.

[up] The point I was making is that even if she is sadistic, it is nevertheless leaning more towards her own survival. I am contemplating probably helping with the EP.

Edited by AustinDR on Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:26:02 AM

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#151386: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:26:02 PM

Well, we shall see. I'd enjoy an eP

Kylotrope Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it) from Honolulu Hawaii Since: Apr, 2018
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
#151387: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:32:31 PM

This will Probbaly be an interesting discussion then.

Things are really about to get Fun around here
Sircray Since: Apr, 2018
#151388: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:34:39 PM

Top Dollar (Jason Danko) from The Crow: Stairway to Heaven

The Show: The Crow adapted for television, the show has rock musician Eric Draven return from the dead as a supernatural and superhuman avenger a year after he and his fiance Shelly Webster were murdered. A police detective named Darryl Albrecht, Shelly's spirit (which resides in the Land of the Dead, having refused to move on without Eric) and a teenage girl named Sarah Mohr help Eric right wrongs and combat injustices in the fictional city of Port Columbia.

Who They Are: Top Dollar is the manager of Blackout, a nightclub and minor holding of Reyes International. He and his gang, consisting of T-Bird, Tin Tin and Funboy, commit murders for money, as well as for fun. Top takes souvenirs from every killing, and keeps them in an extensive "museum" dedicated to his crimes that he has hidden in his office. Race Meyes, the head of Reyes International, hired Top to kill Eric Draven, because, as a Snake (basically an evil Crow) he for some reason feared the soul-binding love that Eric and Shelly shared. Top delegated the job to his minions, who threw Eric out a window before gang raping, beating and shooting Shelly. The trio recorded the murders, and Top kept the videotape as a memento, watching it over and over again.

What They Do:

  • 1-2: A year after Eric and Shelly's deaths, Top rewatches the snuff film with his minions, who he chastises over how they went about killing the couple; what was supposed to be a staged suicide became a brutal double homicide which Albrecht is still hounding them over. After ordering his lackeys to assassinate Albrecht, Top warns them that if they screw up again, he will personally cut each of their heads off and put them on display in his museum. After T-Bird abducts Sarah, who has knowledge of the Crow, Top locks her in his museum, and orders that she be killed if she so much as makes a sound before he is ready to interrogate her. Eric breaks into the Blackout to rescue Sarah, and confronts Top; Top and T-Bird manage to briefly incapacitate Eric, who Top decides to try and kill by blowing the entire nightclub up with C4. Before Top can do so, Eric forces him to experience all of the pain and suffering of all of his victims, which reduces Top to a babbling loon who ends up being hauled off to a psychiatric hospital.
  • 8: Eventually regaining his bearings, Top escapes from the asylum, and in the process kills an orderly by stabbing him in the throat with a spoon before using his blood to paint a crow on a wall. While Top wanders the streets—at one point stopping to fatally bludgeon a man for his clothes—his doctor explains that he spent most of his incarceration under heavy restraint and sedation, due to being so manic and violent, scrawling crows on everything and obsessing over the power that he claimed that a past victim who had come back from the dead possessed. Briefly holding Sarah and her mother prisoner, Top releases them to give Eric a message — "The only way you'll ever be able to stop me is if you kill me, and you don't have the guts." While getting drunk at a bar, Top is approached by the Skull Cowboy, a supernatural being who is bending his non-interference clause to warn Top to give up his vendetta, but Top blows him off, too obsessed with getting back at Eric and with acquiring powers of his own to care about the potential repercussions. Back out on the streets, Top attacks Albrecht, leaving him alive to tell Eric about what happened. Going to the Blackout, Top kills the two policemen stationed there and takes the manager, India, hostage in order to lure Eric into a confrontation; while they wait for Eric, Top rants to India about how intoxicating murder is. When Eric shows up, Top lets India go, but then shoots her in the back in front of Eric due to being a self-described "crazed sicko who can't resist a chance to piss you off." In the ensuing fight, Top successfully goads Eric into killing him by bringing up how many times he watched the snuff film, which he begins reciting lines from. In the show's canon, if a Crow kills a person who was involved in their death, that person will return as a soulless and demonic Snake, which is what Top was counting on.
  • 9: While awaiting trial for his crimes, Funboy suddenly backs out a plea deal for manslaughter, and when asked why, he explains that Top has been haunting his dreams, threatening to kill him if he says anything incriminating, even if his silence means getting the death penalty.
  • 18: Acting through a man named Soleil Hazard, Top "infects" Eric and the rehabilitated Funboy with an Ear Worm. The melody enthralls Eric and causes Funboy agonizing pain, which Soleil uses to control him at Top's behest. Top and Soleil send Funboy out to torment his ex-girlfriend, Sarah's mother Darla, before having him go to the Blackout, where Eric is performing. The plan is to use the tune to force Eric and Funboy into a confrontation that will end with both of them being corrupted into becoming Snakes; since Funboy was one of Eric's killers, he will resurrect as a Snake if Eric kills him, but since he has also become repentant and remorseful, he qualifies as an innocent, and if Eric kills one of those, it will destroy his humanity and cause him to degenerate into a Snake. With the help of Shelly's spirit, Eric and Funboy are able to fight off Top's influence; Top takes his frustrations over this out on Soleil, killing him with a mind-decimating sound that causes him to bleed out from every orifice in his head.

Heinousness: With few exceptions, the show's other villains were run of the mill criminals who killed for reasons like money or revenge; while Top Dollar started out like that, he definitely crossed the line when he willingly gave up his humanity for power while ignoring a cosmic being's warning that he should stop and turn back now for the sake of his soul. His lust for revenge against Eric also went beyond simply wanting to kill him; he wanted to completely destroy Eric by corrupting him into becoming a monster like himself. His treatment of Funboy and Soleil also showed that he saw his own allies (regardless of loyalty) as nothing more than disposable pawns.

Mitigating Factors: He was mad at his gang for how they killed Eric and Shelly, but it was only due to pragmatism, and not morality; what was supposed to be a quiet and tidy staged suicide turned into a messy double homicide that attracted a lot of unwanted attention. He let Sarah, her mother, and Albrecht live, though it was only so that they could give Eric messages and threats for him, and to screw with Eric in a "I can get to your friends anytime I want" kind of way.

11111001011 11111001011 from Peachtree City, GA Since: Dec, 2018 Relationship Status: Abstaining
11111001011
#151389: Feb 22nd 2019 at 8:35:51 PM

[tup] all I missed.

Help me!
Scraggle Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
papyru30 from Colorado for summer break Since: Aug, 2016 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
Bullman Enid Sinclair Since: Jun, 2018 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
DemonDuckofDoom from Some Pond in Hell Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
G-Editor The 47th President Since: Mar, 2015 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
MasterJoseph Frolaytia X Qwenthur of Heavy Object from Not telling. Since: Mar, 2018 Relationship Status: All I Want for Christmas is a Girlfriend
AustinDR Lizzid people! (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Lizzid people!
#151396: Feb 22nd 2019 at 9:16:29 PM

Also, I kind of noticed that some of what was written on Maggie was plagiarized from Wikipedia.

What is the film?

Incarnate is a 2016 supernatural horror film starring Aaron Eckhart in the role of Dr. Seth Ember. Now...the film is not your typical exorcism movie. In this case, Seth is able to travel into the subconsciousness of the possessed victim through a rather complicated process. He is called to help free an 11 year old boy when he gets possessed by a demon all too familiar to him.

Who is Maggie? What has she done?

The nameless demon is nicknamed Maggie after the host it possessed. Years ago, Seth learned how to use astral projection — where he could enter into other people's dreams — and kept that as a secret for a long time. As such, this garnered him the unwanted attention of several evil spirits. One such demon? Possesses a woman and through her crashes into Seth's car. The accident renders Seth to using a wheelchair, but he lost his wife and son. He had since dedicated his strength into finding Maggie.

Cameron Sparrow gets attacked by a hooded stranger who was harboring "Maggie." When the stranger died, Maggie then jumps into his body. From there as already mentioned, Maggie traps Cameron within his mind, its ultimate intention being to feed on his energy to sustain itself. When the possession became more pronounced, Seth is notified of the case but only takes an interest when he is told that the demon responsible may as well have been Maggie. Arriving to the house, it is explained that Seth had only about 8 minutes before his heart gave out to evict Maggie. It is also explained that demons cannot truly possess people; rather, they would have them in dreamlike states.

As a means of getting Cameron to realize he was dreaming, his father Dan is given word about the exorcism. He arrives to assist in the exorcism/eviction...only for him to get badly injured from Maggie's assaults and dying. Shortly afterward, Ember returns to Cameron's subconscious, and uses a ring that Dan had given him prior to leaving to make Cameron realize that nothing was real. Just as it seemed that the two were to escape...Seth wakes up in a hospital. And he sees his deceased wife and son overseeing him. In despair, Seth begs Maggie to take him instead, which it does...and Seth is immediately injected with a vial of blood from a possessed victim and uses that opportunity to jump out of the balcony, killing himself. Despite being warned not to touch Ember's body, it looks like Maggie succeeds at possessing some other hapless sap before Ember succumbed.

Freudian Excuse? Mitigating factors?

So like I had said, initially after seeing the film, I thought Maggie was a disqualifier on the grounds of despite being sadistic, it is ultimately apparent that part of the demon's motivation was self-preservation as these demons are definitely not like the ones you are used to. With that being said...I ultimately feel that two scenes in particular go too beyond the point of necessity. The deaths of Ember's family was simply unnecessary. It didn't try to possess either of the two to sustain itself, and ultimately there was no reason to. But what makes the tragedy worse is when Seth tried to escape with Cameron: he wakes up in a hospital with his family alive and happy. The fact that Maggie takes this personal tragedy and rubs it in Seth's face does edge her out slightly from being just a predator trying to feed itself. And then there are the other instances of sadism.

Heinous standard

Has a pretty low body count, but of that body count included a child, and then there's placing another child in a Lotus-Eater Machine to slowly drain away his life. There are also its acts of sadism.

Conclusion

Abstaining myself, but there you go.

Edited by AustinDR on Feb 22nd 2019 at 10:06:17 AM

11111001011 11111001011 from Peachtree City, GA Since: Dec, 2018 Relationship Status: Abstaining
papyru30 from Colorado for summer break Since: Aug, 2016 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
#151399: Feb 22nd 2019 at 9:36:01 PM

[tup]Maggie.

Also I should get the quote crowner called now.

Edited by papyru30 on Feb 22nd 2019 at 10:37:35 AM

G-Editor The 47th President Since: Mar, 2015 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities

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