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
Lizzid people!
Xerosic
Basam, Pedo and Face.
What is the work? Death Run is a 1987 super low-budget post-apocalyptic film. Realizing that a nuclear war was going to destroy modern society, a scientist placed her son Paul and his girlfriend Jenny into suspended animation to help repopulate the earth in the future. 25 years later, the couple is reanimated and soon fall victim to our candidate.
Who is he? The neo-nazi Messiah is the smiling megalomaniacal ruler of Junk City, having converted the population into a cult of personality dedicated only to him under the pretense that he "saved them from oblivion". It is said that before the holocaust, Messiah was kept away locked away from ther rest of the world, and when he broke free, Messiah "united every rotting thing in this new world" and since then has been leader of what can only be called a "sick society". Messiah keeps dozens of mutants captive as toys for his sadistic game, The Run, which involves handcuffing a person to an electrified metal wire and forcing them to fight mutants bare-handed; and like many fascist dictatorships before, the humans themselves live in decadency, while Messiah is kept safe from trouble. If tormenting mutants for entertainment and not caring for his people wasn't enough, Messiah has a personal harem of several sex slaves. After Paul and Jenny are kidnapped by Messiah's gang and brought to Junk City, Messiah sends Paul to The Run and we are informed that another prisoner, a man only known by the nickname "Hero", was the only man to have ever survived The Run.
Messiah congratulates Jenny for being "clean", aka lacking wasteland mutations, and shows her his deformed hand before violently raping the girl, which was enough to make her bleed. In a conversation with his right-hand man, Messiah says that he has plans for raping her yet again, and reveals that "she may also die". After the couple escape with the help of Hero and a jailer named Barbara, they find another one of Messiah's victims, a woman who was raped and impregnated by him; because of her pregnancy, Messiah expelled her from the harem but thought she would make a good decoy, sending her to live with a group of cannibals who kill Jenny and feed her to Paul. The trio form a plan to end Messiah's reign, starting by training Paul and letting him be captured for The Run; Paul survives and they kill Messiah's soldiers. Left with no assistance, Messiah is surrounded by the harem and is genuinely confused as to why they would betray their Messiah instead of obeying him; all of his rape victims then stab Messiah to death. His last words? "I still live".
Mitigating Factors? Messiah is kinda nice towards his right-hand man, but the movie makes it clear that he is another one of his sex objects.
Heinous? For a guy with zero direct murders, Messiah is a nasty Serial Rapist who turned an entire town into a cult, and is perfectly okay with allowing the people to live in a horrible environment because this is the society that he always wanted.
Conclusion?
Sure to Messiah.
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)By the way someone added this second part to Vihaela from Alex Verus.
- Vihaela is the true leader of the White Rose organization, a series of mage-run brothels. Vihaela has women and children abducted to serve as prostitutes with many of them having their minds forcibly altered to make them more docile. Others who resemble celebrities are physically altered and then mentally forced to service any fantasy of the client. Vihaela also runs the brothels on a "points" system, with whoever fails a task or displeases a client obtaining a point. At the end of the month, the one with the most points is sent to Vihaela's laboratory and never returns. Upon being discovered, Vihaela promptly betrays her associates and sacrifices an innocent woman made to look like her in order to escape.
- If anything, White Rose was holding her back. In Bound, we get to see how she acts on her own time. The way she describes what she does and how casually she does it is utterly chilling.
- Vihaela is the true leader of the White Rose organization, a series of mage-run brothels. Vihaela has women and children abducted to serve as prostitutes with many of them having their minds forcibly altered to make them more docile. Others who resemble celebrities are physically altered and then mentally forced to service any fantasy of the client. Vihaela also runs the brothels on a "points" system, with whoever fails a task or displeases a client obtaining a point. At the end of the month, the one with the most points is sent to Vihaela's laboratory and never returns. Upon being discovered, Vihaela promptly betrays her associates and sacrifices an innocent woman made to look like her in order to escape.
I'm curious she was approved in 2016. I know her arc wasn't finished then. Has she done anything else to warrant an expansion.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
for Messiah.
So I'm done with RWBY: Dark. Yay. All right, I'm gonna go over the main debatable topics and offer my personal opinion on them all. I may or may not also share my opinions on the show RWBY itself, as I have actually seen the entire series so far. Let's get started. Crank on "When It Falls" or "Divide" if you wanna get in the mood.
- "The story is just grimdark trash that was made solely to get a CM approved."
Bollocks. This story has plenty of plot and characters involved to keep it from falling in that category. Chapters 1 and 3 kinda fall in this area, sure. But when the actual story begins, and it focuses on Cinder and her crew? It turns into a story about La Résistance trying to fight off The Empire. ...They're failing miserably, but there is a plot there. The story's over 50K words, and counting.
- "Ruby Rose is an edgy tryhard villain who was clearly written to be a CM just for the sake of being a CM."
The quality of the villain does not matter. If they commit enough actions to be considered a CM, they're a CM. I myself have written more than one CM that a couple people have rightfully criticized for being too cartoony and for being edgy for the sake of being edgy. No one in this forum hesitated to vote them up regardless. Also, since we're on the subject of the canon series?
Adam Taurus.
Adam Taurus.
ADAM TAURUS.
ADAM. GODDAMN. MOTHERFUCKING. COCKSUCKING. TAURUS.
- "Ruby Rose is a bastardization of the canon character and is a clear case of Canon Defilement!"
I mean, yeah, she suffers from Adaptational Villainy, but that hasn't really stopped us from putting up a fanfic villain if it makes sense in the context of the story. And, again, the actual show has, in the eyes of some, ruined some of the characters at some point between Volumes 4 through 6. Do we seriously need to open up the Bumblebee debate? Or how they killed off Adam Taurus after finally giving him a small amount of depth? Or that everyone forgave Ozpin for all the shit he's done by the end of Volume 6 despite the fact that he's taken over a teenager's body and nobody fucking cares anymore?
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DISCUSS THESE TOPICS ABOUT THE SHOW?
...I'm gonna move on now before I start ranting. >__>
- "Ruby Rose has little to no motivation and is just evil for the sake of being evil."
Ah, good. You brought that up. So you're saying she's basically Cinder Fall from the show. Who got approved with no hesitation. Keep in mind, I actually really like Cinder Fall (before Volume 5, anyway), but a vast majority of the fanbase hates her and feel that she's a generic villain who tries waaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard to be evil, always talks like a Card-Carrying Villain, and always succeeds in everything she does up until the plot itself turns her into an idiot.
- "It's heavily implied Ruby Rose raped someone off-screen. That's too far for me."
Why is that the one reason as to why you wouldn't vote her up? I know rape is a touchy subject. As is killing children. And raping children. And raping dead children. But you know what, I'm gonna be blunt here.
It doesn't bother me.
It just doesn't. I've been in this forum for years. I've written villains who are rapists. I've seen dozens of TV shows that deal with rape. There is a popular TV series that revolves around someone being sexually abused in every goddamn episode. I'm too desensitized to give a shit when a villain does stuff like this anymore. What did shock me was the fact that Ruby Rose callously murdered her parents in the first chapter and turned her sister into a feral slave after torturing her for a year. And I'm still seriously considering whether or not that will be what allows her to be a CM or not.
Even with that being said, there are a few RWBY villains from fanfics who are rapists (Ruby and Nora has one or two) and they got approved.
- "The story isn't finished, and Ruby's arc hasn't concluded either."
Neither has Cinder's. She's still approved, and having seen the show, she is not getting taken off.
- "This is a fanfic, not original content, and this fanfic turned the central protagonist of the fucking show into a CM worthy villain!"
And therein is my main dilemma. Therein is the reason why this is a problem for me.
It's not the fact that Adaptational Villainy is in play.
It's not about the fact that the villain is being too edgy.
It's not about the fact that the villain has no goal or is too "generic."
It's not about the fact that the villain raped someone.
It's not about the fact that the story may or may not be poorly-written.
It's not about the fact that the villain may be poorly-written.
You can do all of these things, and depending on the circumstances, still be considered a CM. But this isn't based on original content. It's based from an existing show, and nothing about this fanfic implies it takes place in a Mirror Universe, short of Word of God. It just feels like the author made all the villains from the show the heroes, and all the heroes (except Yang) the villains.
Which I honestly would not care, if it wasn't Ruby friggin' Rose herself.
So yeah...those are my thoughts.
I'm not voting on this one. If she ends up going up, I'm not gonna argue or complain about it. But the fact that the protagonist of the show got turned into this kind of villain does not sit well with me. And this is coming from someone who doesn't even like Ruby Rose from the actual show. If this was Cinder, or Salem, or even...um...mmm...that faunus dude with the scorpion tail thing, sure. I'd be fine voting those characters up.
...Well now that seems like a missed opportunity. Scorpion-Tail-Dude is a Psychopathic Manchild in the actual show; he'd be perfect CM material for this story. :/
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
Ruby Rose, and the Messiah
Personally, I don't mind fanfics making good guys into bad guys or vice versa as long as there's either an attempt at a believable Face–Heel Turn or if it's like this story where it isn't even trying to be part of the same universe and uses a modified version of the character or, like this story seems to do, is pretty much a completely different character that just happens to have the heroes name.
Edited by papyru30 on Jul 10th 2019 at 4:34:07 AM
Still retaining my no on Ruby. Still sounds pretty grimdark. Again, my issue with the rape is that it feels tacked on. I would be fine with an evil, alternate version of Ruby qualifying, but to me, that added part about the rape screams to me as a pisspoor attempt at trying to make Ruby as evil as possible. That is something I personally take offense with. While you can have rape in a story, you'd better be damned good of a writer to make it work in the setting. If not, don't put it in in the first place.
Though I will agree with the sentiment that I am getting tired of these ''RWBY;; fanfics as well.
Edited by AustinDR on Jul 10th 2019 at 3:46:42 AM
@papyru30: That's kind of my problem though. If Ruby had some Face–Heel Turn, sure. That wouldn't bother me. But the story starts with her murdering her parents and torturing Yang. That didn't sit well with me. Even the characterization of Weiss and Blake seem more believable in this fanfic than Ruby's.
...I find it funny that out of the four central protagonists, Ruby is my least favorite in and out of canon.
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
Honestly, I wasn't as shocked by the fact that Ruby Rose of all people could make it. I mean, I had previously EP Echoes's Warlord, who was a villainous version of Naruto Uzumaki. And no one complained when he went up.
Edited by GeorgieEnkoom on Jul 10th 2019 at 12:56:34 PM
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)The reason why I don't have an issue with this is that, like I said earlier, it seems like this is basically a completely different character that is just named Ruby Rose (I haven't read the story myself and I probably won't since it doesn't interest me). Though it seems like this version doesn't work as well as a reverse of her canon character as Wiess or Blake's do.
