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
Crater. My fucking God...
to Gurngsi. Indeed a glorious comeback.
Now, here's one I've been preparing for for a little while now. I've thought about proposing him a few times, and there was no effort post as far as I could tell (most I could find was someone asking if he was proposed), so here goes.
Also, this is gonna be long. I'm really sorry about that, but this particular EP was tough to put into writing.
What is the work?
LISA is a set of bizarre and super dark indie games from the early-mid 2010s. The first game is a Yume Nikki-esque game about a girl named Lisa Armstrong who tries to cope with her father Marty's sexual abuse, which fails and she ultimately commits suicide offscreen. This is largely unimportant to the EP beyond its effects on the second game (The Painful) and its DLC (The Joyful). Beyond just the shift to an RPG, the setting was...quite different.
In The Painful, the protagonist is Lisa's newly introduced older brother Brad, who was also abused by Marty and forced to take part in abusing his little sister as a child. Needless to say, this took quite a toll on him, and despite being able to master his family's extremely powerful martial arts techniques, teaching classes to kids, and even adopting a homeless orphan, he grew up to be a depressed drug addict. Eventually the events of the first game happen and Lisa kills herself.
And then at some point after that, a Great White Flash kills every woman in the world, keeps the world virtually frozen in time, and essentially shuts down society. It all effectively turn the world into a giant warzone where the men compete for power, resources, and a lot of NSFW material. Now is this played for Black Comedy? Only when talking with unimportant NPCs and when dealing with some minor party members and bosses; the main plot takes the entire situation very seriously. Plus there isn't any actual NSFW material in the game; just references.
Brad eventually finds a baby girl and, over the objections of his childhood friends who want to save humanity, raises her as an attempt to make up for what happened to Lisa. This goes fine for roughly ten years. Then two of his friends decide Brad is being selfish and alert people to the girl's (Buddy's) existence. Soon after, everyone knows about her and Brad's house is raided, Buddy having been kidnapped. So Brad goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to get her back while also dealing with his addiction to the emotionally destructive drug Joy.
Now, yes; this is totally messed up. Brad racks up a massive body count, and nearly every character becomes obsessed with finding Buddy, whether for pleasure or to bring her to Rando. And Marty? In addition to all this making him small potatoes, it's revealed towards the end of The Painful that Lisa's suicide actually prompted a Heel Realization. Buddy eventually found him and stayed with him for a few days, during which he genuinely tried to be a good father. And then Brad finds him and kills him in front of Buddy, who had grown to like Marty as a father figure, all to kill any chance of Catharsis Factor.
So why the heck am I bringing this up when it seems impossible to have a keeper? Because, other than Marty's crimes, all of this was intended and orchestrated by one man.
Who is he?
Dr. Yado is your average scientist. At some point, he worked on a project to create super soldiers, which led to the creation of Joy. The project was a failure; the test subjects mutated into hideously grotesque forms that, while powerful, could not be controlled and would often kill their handlers. They also lost most of their reasoning, so they were deemed useless and the project was shut down.
Secretly, Yado actually had a way to control the Joy Mutants. For whatever reason, most of the Joy Mutants were able to be controlled by trumpet music, and Yado put in the effort to be able to control any Joy Mutant as he saw fit. This gave Yado a massive god complex, and in order to prevent the other scientists from finding out, he secretly gave them all Joy and mutated them.
Around this time, Yado formed a partnership with one of Brad's students and Lisa's boyfriend Buzzo, who wanted revenge on Brad for his part in what happened to Lisa. With this development, Yado was able to finalize his plan and started putting it into motion. Buzzo started spreading Joy around like a drug, even forming a cult around it to increase its spread.
When the time came, Yado, whose wife was pregnant with their daughter Nancy, was hidden away as Yado enacted the Great White Flash. Yado's wife eventually gave birth, and after the early months, Yado came to her and told her his plan: He was going to insert their daughter into the world in order to start a war, and when the dust settled, only the Mutants would be left. When his wife asked if Nancy was going to be his queen, Yado replied that he would be the only ruler and killed his wife.
Yado, whether directly or through Buzzo, abandoned Nancy to be found by Brad, knowing that his history with both Lisa and Joy would lead to him becoming overprotective of the girl, renamed Buddy. With phase one done, Buzzo continued spreading Joy and Yado waited for the war over Buddy,
It went perfectly. Brad slaughtered everyone who opposed him while Buzzo physically and mentally tormented Brad along the way, even force feeding him Joy in order to enhance his addiction. Buddy even got addicted to Joy herself in the process. In the end, Brad killed an entire army led by that orphan he adopted, with only the orphan (now called Rando) surviving. However, Brad mutated, and when he tried to go after Buddy, Buzzo captured him, finally finishing his revenge.
Now Buzzo? The entire time, he went along with Yado's plans to get revenge on Brad. Personally? He despised Yado for both his actions and for being a Dirty Coward who watched from afar. Yado, knowing that Buzzo had no reason to continue their partnership any further, but also knowing that Buzzo could kill him in a second if he didn't just let him go with Brad, allowed Buzzo to leave peacefully, but warned Buzzo to not interfere with his endgame.
This leads to The Joyful. The Joy Buddy took started to twist her mind, and she decided that, in order to prove she was more than a means for sex and procreation, she would kill the six remaining powerful warlords and become the strongest human alive. While she does this, she comes across numerous messages intended to raise her bloodlust; while the author is unknown, it's all but outright stated to be Yado. Meanwhile, more and more people are mutating, while Buddy kills off those who haven't taken Joy, are strong enough to resist the mutation, and Mutants that haven't fallen under Yado's control, all with Yado pushing her from behind the scenes.
After killing all six warlords (and the death of Rando, who was initially helping her due to seeing Buddy as a sister, but abandoning her halfway through for how far she was going), Buddy is on the verge of mutation. Meanwhile, a trumpet plays in the distance. At last, Buddy comes face to face with Yado and his ultimate Joy Mutant: Sweetheart. Yado had used Sweetheart to protect Buddy on two occasions earlier, but now that nearly everyone that could potentially stop Yado was out of the picture, Yado is ready to kill his daughter since she hasn't mutated yet. Sweetheart attacks Buddy as Yado retreats, until eventually Buzzo arrives. Buzzo tells Buddy that Yado had a vaccine for Joy addiction and that he'll hold off Sweetheart so she can confront Yado.
When Buddy reaches Yado, he's sitting on a throne made out of Joy Mutants. Yado is utterly horrified, having never expected Buddy to actually reach him, and his throne can barely do anything while Buddy hacks it all to pieces. She then has an intense hallucination that results in her stabbing and beating the ever loving stuffing out of Yado, who flees for his life to a cliff. When Buddy corners him and demands answers, he rants that he's both a higher power and her father and, as a result, she and everyone else has to do whatever he says. Buzzo, having killed Sweetheart, catches up and throws his weapon at Yado, knocking him off the cliff and shutting him up for good.
Heinous by the Standards of the Story?
Now these games are DARK. Child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, murder, suicide, drug addiction, psychological manipulation; a LOT of messed up stuff happens here. None of the protagonists are saints either, with Lisa herself showing signs of being manipulative in a flashback in The Joyful, and both Brad and Buddy are mass murderers. Not to mention nearly every character is willing to become a rapist if they see Buddy, to the point where the amount of NPCs that won't attack Buddy in The Joyful if she talks to them without a mask on can be counted on one hand.
Yado still passes with flying colors. With the exception of the stuff triggered by Marty's actions, Yado is responsible for everything bad that happens in The Painful and The Joyful. And the lengths Brad and Buddy go to, as well as the men becoming dangerously sex crazed? Yado intended for all of it for the sake of culling humanity and enslaving the remnants. And while I mentioned there was Black Comedy at parts, whenever it pops up, it's during an optional conversation or during something with no connections to the main plot. Whenever the main plot is going on, there's no joking around, and everything gets super serious. The Joyful, in which Yado has a more direct hand in, severely tones down the comedy and restricts it almost entirely to optional content, and by the end, only a handful of humanity is alive thanks to Yado's actions, and in one of the endings, Buddy succumbs to the Joy and doesn't take the vaccine, effectively dooming humanity.
Mitigating Factors?
Okay, this is the tricky part. There are a few arguments in this category that can be made, but they're all very easily shot down. Let's go through the list:
- Yado appears as an unnamed running gag character throughout the main game! Throughout The Painful, Yado can be seen out of reach, playing his trumpet. This is long before we get confirmation he's Dr. Yado at the end of The Joyful, and both the trumpet and him being out of reach become a lot less funny post-reveal.
- Yado only speaks at the very end of the DLC! We never see him before that beyond the gag! True, we never see him. There are, however, a few flashbacks and scenes where we see a black screen, but we hear what is clearly Yado talking to someone else (either Buzzo or his wife, depending on the scene.) This had to be done to not give away his identity before the reveal, and we see in great detail what his actions cause anyway.
- Still, a running gag being the mastermind? That's kinda ridiculous, don't you think? No, because there's foreshadowing even in The Painful that the trumpet guy is Dr. Yado. The lab where Joy was created is a sub-area in the game which contains the first reference to Dr. Yado. In it, it's mentioned that Yado seems to like polka dots. Trumpet guy is the only character to wear a polka dot shawl. Furthermore, if you defy common sense and go the wrong way after the final battle with Rando, you can see Yado just sitting there, watching.
- Okay, so maybe that's fine. But he protected Buddy twice in the DLC! That's only so she could continue killing everyone. Once the six main warlords were dead, Yado didn't think twice before sending Sweetheart after her.
- Buy why spare Buzzo when he became a liability? Because he knew Buzzo could and would kill him. Letting him leave peacefully was the best move. Furthermore, the DLC reveals that Buzzo is a Joy addict himself, and I would be shocked if Yado didn't know that.
- In the final battle, Yado can't look Buddy in the eye in he threatens her. He cares! No. Just a minute ago he nearly killed her with Sweetheart. He doesn't care about his daughter at all; he's just horrified that his plan, which was perfect up until that point, had been endangered at the eleventh hour, as he didn't count on needing another strong Mutant in case Sweetheart failed. Yado is a Dirty Coward through and through.
- Why the heck would Yado create a vaccine? This was a question quite a few people asked after The Joyful. There's no in-game answer, but the creator eventually clarified that it was in case Yado had, for whatever reason, gotten Joy into his system at some point, so he could cure himself. I know it's Word of God, but it totally fits with his character, and it's nothing more than minor clarification on a plot point.
Now this list - especially the second item - is the main reason as to why I was hesitant on proposing Yado. Having thought about it, we have other characters in similar situations that have gotten up because of the massive impact they leave being enough to take them out of Offstage Villainy despite barely getting actual screentime; just in video games, I can think of the Center Archangels and the Radiance. Since the other points don't hold up at all under scrutiny, I finally felt comfortable with this.
Verdict
. A normal guy destroying society and driving humanity to extinction, including killing his wife and subjecting his daughter to absolute horror before turning her into a killing machine, just so he could play God is extreme even for this setting.
Edited by finalsurvivor1 on May 18th 2019 at 4:29:23 AM
Final, I'll read that EP later.
Elfen: Here you go
.
Shall I submit that image to Image Pickin', caption and all?
BTW, I asked Lighty, and that image is from Empty Memories and Cold Graves, which looks like it will add to the already-massive rapsheets of the two.
Also, since we're cutting Animated!Batman: The Dark Knight Returns!Joker, should I cut this image
◊?
Also, damn, that means Michael Emerson no longer has a CM.
Edited by ACW on May 18th 2019 at 5:42:21 AM
Okay, from Septimus:
- Hasn't it always been done like that?
- Even if that's not a good enough reason—which I can concede at least in some cases—how else would we do it, at least in this case? Just lump them all together then sort alphabetically? That seems...less than optimal.
Also, potholed Scar:
- The Lion King: Scar is the scheming younger brother of King Mufasa, driven to bitterness when his position in line to the throne is lost after the birth of his nephew, Simba. Tricking Simba and his friend Nala into entering the Elephant Graveyard to be killed by his hyena henchmen, Scar then orchestrates a wildebeest stampede and tosses Mufasa to his death when his former plan fails, blaming and exiling Simba for the deed. As king, Scar's mismanagement leads the Pride Lands to ruin, with him remaining apathetic to the mass starvation. When Simba returns, Scar tries to have him publicly executed, revealing his role in Mufasa's death to torment Simba and cowardly trying to blame his crime's on his hyenas when Simba has him at his mercy. The Lion Guard reveals that Scar lead the original Lion Guard, killing them all when they refused his earlier attempts to overthrow Mufasa with him. In the second season, Scar's spirit tries to lead the animals of the Outlands on a brutal conquest of the Pride Lands: cutting off the river and entire water supply of the whole Pride Lands; and eventually simply trying to have them burn the savannah and all its inhabitants. Even after the death of his physical body, Scar remained a hateful creature driven by spite.
Marty...so the father, who abused his kids AND forced one to abuse the other, has a Heel Realization???
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Anyway, since it seems like we DO see Dr. Yado, if only briefly, I'll give him a
Edited by ACW on May 18th 2019 at 7:30:20 AM
Yes to Cup, Curwen, Crater and Yado.
Abstain on Kopa.
My most loathsome CM? Brainiac maybe and Fan Film Dr. Dee. Dee especially.
Edited by Bullman on May 18th 2019 at 6:49:34 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
to everyone I missed, tentatively to Koopa
Most loathsome CM? Probably Craster
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FOR MARIA
