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
I think I'm going to say no on Stearne. It seems as though Hopkins overshadows him. The one rape is awful, but it's the only thing he does that isn't on Hopkins' orders, and we don't generally qualify you on the basis of one crime.
Going to have to vote no on the example that Anew just brought up, at least for now. I don't feel I have enough information to make an informed decision, and while his description of him/her sounds nasty, it also sounds completely and utterly insane. I'm sorry, but when you are both suffering from a split personality, and a desire for failure so strong that you can't take anything but joy from your own impending defeat and demise, than you have got serious, serious psychological problems, and ones that may well exonerate you from responsibility (or at least a lot of it).
Researching it, I can see Anew is on the money. It's less a split personality and more an avatar/puppet. Monokuma is Junko.
Moreover, taken delight in her own fall isn't different from the Joker, who does that all the time. Even Richard III admitted he hated himself. In this case, she's a despair fetishist who finds her own defeat hilarious/arousing, which isn't clinical insanity. If the Joker's not disqualified, why should she be?
Okay. As of this exact second we can discuss Todd and Jack.
They qualify. Let's get all this over with and finally have this discussion.
edited 29th Sep '13 7:06:44 PM by Lightysnake
RE: Todd & Jack
This may come as a surprise to some forum members, but I have never seen a single episode of Breaking Bad in my entire life. So if someone could please give me a full length write up on a) what Todd and Jack have done and b) how they are so much worse than the rest of the characters in a show full of drug dealers I would really appreciate it.
Todd and Jack, lesse...
Todd: Executes a child who witnessed a train robbery without batting an eye (killing children's pretty taboo generally speaking. Walt does poison one, but intentionally nonfatally). He and Jack later kill Walt's DEA brother-in-law and his partner, take Walt's money and kidnap Walt's old partner Jessie, enslaving him to cook Meth for them with the unspoken threat his old lover and her son will die if he refuses. When Jessie fails an escape attempt, Jack and Todd murder her and then tell Jessie if he ever tries this again, "there's still the kid."
There's also Jack having ten witnesses in prison murdered and a few other murders/attempted murders
Child killing and slavery is pretty taboo otherwise. All the other drug kingpins deal with only willing sales, and murdering someone's innocent loved ones like that didn't have precedent. There is one other case of a kid being murdered but he was a member of the drug gang and had killed someone himself before. Todd and Jack straight up execute a woman because her ex-boyfriend tried to stop being a meth-slave
Plus Jack has a bodycount that equals the Cousins with the witness murders.
The answer to affection...no, not really. Todd never really demonstrates 'affection' for anyone. He and Jack get on well but there's never a "I love you, my nephew!" and "I love you too, you whacky ol' guy!" bit.
So, I have some concerns about counting them.
I guess I have a question about how to handle someone like Todd who as a sociopath can only mimic normal emotion, yet at the same time, is friendly (up until its not in his interest to be) and "cares" about some people.
I wouldn't consider Todd's affection for Lydia redeeming, since he's a Stalker with a Crush and it only motivates him to do one of his worst actions (kidnapping and tortudring Jesse and making him his slave/meth making teacher).
On the other hand, Todd deeply respects Walter, which is why Jack allows Walter to live and leave with some money; its also probably the only reason Todd didn't kill Walt's family (not sure how much not murdering innocent people and only threatening to murder them counts as a redeeming quality).
One particular scene/instance that gets at what makes Todd a hard call for me is that he brings Jessie (now his slave) ice cream as a reward for a job well done. Later in the same episode, he punishes Jessie for trying to escape by murdering Jessie's girlfriend and threatening to murder her son if Jessie tries again.
Now obviously, bringing ice cream doesn't count for much against murdering someone and threatening to murder their child, but its a classic Todd action- mimicking normal behavior of being nice- and it doesn't occur to him that bringing ice cream doesn't really compensate for the whole "torturing and making a slave thing".
As for Jack, I would consider him a harder keep since he clearly indulges Todd, and since he seems to be evil and sane (as opposed to a sociopath like Todd), I think you could infer he cares about him.
I'd lean toward saying Jack is Affably Evil and rather reasonable (except for the whole Neo-nazi thing). The thing that does call this into question though is that when he finds out Todd had murdered a child (during that heist), his reaction is amusement and to mock Jessie for being a crybaby.
edited 29th Sep '13 8:17:44 PM by Hodor
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wikiActually, I'm glad you mentioned the ice cream bit. The actor and creators commented on it that Todd was treating Jessie like a 'pet' as opposed to anything redeeming. As for Todd respecting Walter...not sure about that. I'm not sure that's enough to disqualify him. Jack says it, but Todd himself just really goes along with Walter without any real affection...it never mitigates his behavior.
Jack never really demonstrates real love TO Todd, either. They get on well, but there's not much with their relationship there. Finally, if Todd killed Walt's family, that's nasty police attention after her DEA Agent brother in law went missing. That's pragmatic.
Plus like you said...Todd is only nice till he has a reason not to be.
edited 29th Sep '13 8:23:54 PM by Lightysnake
From what you've all said of Todd, would he have the brains to avoid a murder for pragmatic reasons? I'll also note that even if he treats Jesse like a pet, that could still be a disqualifier. It's called Pet the Dog for a reason after all.
Anyway, going off of what Hodor and Lightysnake have both said, it sounds as though Todd is a psychopath played relatively realistically. And this brings me to a point I've been meaning to raise for a while—I know that we usually don't treat psychopathy as a mental illness or excuse, and in most cases that's fine. The Sociopath usually isn't played for sympathy, or as an excuse anyway.
However, if you do some reading on psychopathy (heck just read our analysis page
for The Sociopath) it becomes clear that, particularly in the case of lower functioning sociopaths/psychopaths, there is a degree of moral impairment at work. If you genuinely cannot comprehend that other people are as real as you, or process that they have feelings and wants which you are denying them, then making moral choices becomes a lot more difficult. You have to accept that things are wrong simply because other people tell you they are wrong, without understanding why they are wrong, or in some cases, even having an innate ability to grasp what "wrong" means in the first place. Couple that with an ingrained impulsivity and an inability to envision consequences or learn from your mistakes, and well, try and put yourself in that position—could you be a moral person with a brain wired like that?
Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that every so often, we see a psychopath or other antisocial personality where their condition is played as an excuse. Alice Morgan, who I mentioned during my discussion of Luther is a good example. As a malignant narcissist, Alice's ability to understand wrongness is impaired, despite her genius IQ, and even her attempts at helping the hero tend to go quickly off track (such as when she sends people to beat up his wife's boyfriend, thinking this will help salvage his marriage). There was a sociopath in a Criminal Minds episode who realised what he was and tried to seek some form of medical treatment (though sadly, there really isn't much they can do, beyond give you drugs that reduce aggression). In cases like that, where the show plays the condition as realistically as possible and treats it as a mental illness, I think that we are obligated to do the same.
Which brings me to my question—is Todd one of those examples? From some of what Hodor has said, it sounds like he might be. If he really cannot process that giving somebody an ice cream does not make up for threatening to off his family, then I would question to what degree he can make moral choices. He might understand intellectually that something is wrong, but does he actually have a grasp of what that means?
On the subject of Jack, if he's the sane, non-mentally ill of the two, and still goes along with Todd's actions, then he might be the better keeper.
edited 30th Sep '13 12:49:39 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Here's the kicker for me. Todd seems to know on a level his actions are wrong, he simply doesn't process the...caring for it. After he killed Drew Sharp (the little boy), he brushes it off but conveniently neglects to mention it to Uncle Jack, indicating he thought Jack would be upset (that he wasn't later on says more of Jack).
The second issue is when he murders Andrea, he tells her right up "this isn't personal" and with Jessie, he keeps him enslaved with Jack by threatening his loved ones. He demonstrates understanding of emotions at the least, and knows how to keep his way around them.
Does he know it's wrong because he's been told it's wrong, or does he actually have a working concept of what that means? The "it's nothing personal" scene lends some credence to him getting it, but some of the other scenes that have been described here suggest that he might not.
I'm a lot more comfortable with Jack qualifiying, I think. It sounds like he's as bad as his nephew without the possible excuse of mental illness, and if he's the one actually calling the shots, he's more responsible anyway.
Sidenote—another example of psychopathy played as mental illness: Creed Diskenth of Black Cat. The man actually can't understand that bad bossing his subordinates will make them want to run away, or that The Hero is not, in fact, going to forgive him for murdering his closest friend.
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As long as Todd has an actual working concept of morality and isn't just aping it because he's been told he has to, I am comfortable with his going up. I'm just not sure whether this is the case. I think I'll see how the rest of this discussion of him plays out, and then cast my vote.
On another sidenote, I'll add that even in Real Life the ability of antisocial personalities (which include psychopaths, extreme forms of narcissism and a variety of other fun disorders) to really comprehend morality varies wildly. Some get it just fine and choose to ignore it; others honestly do not understand that there are rules, or that said rules do in fact, apply to them.
Still, we usually don't discount Pet the Dog for not being enough. It seems like a bad precedent to set.
edited 29th Sep '13 9:16:45 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
but when you are both suffering from a split personality, and a desire for failure so strong that you can't take anything but joy from your own impending defeat and demise, than you have got serious, serious psychological problems, and ones that may well exonerate you from responsibility (or at least a lot of it).
Should've worded it differently. Monokuma is not so much a split personality as it is a "character" that the mastermind becomes. She switches between personas alot through the last chapter/episode, stating she gets bored with playing just one role. Again, this is less like real certified multiple personality disorder and more like Joker levels of insanity where she can easily slide between how awful or silly she wants to be. In the last moment, she drops all character and is this completely blank, empty, unemotional person who feels nothing but despair and stands for despair in of itself (in contrast to the protagonist, who stands for hope), and then she goes Laughing Mad as she inflicts ultimate despair on herself.
Also, it wasn't a desire for failure itself: it was a desire for the feeling of despair and woe that came with it. The feeling she wanted to inflict on the entire world. For the Evulz. Basically, she would've been happy if she'd succeeded OR failed, because there'd be plenty of despair to go around. She also abused and eventually murdered her twin sister, and is responsible for everything currently wrong with the world and the rest of the cast. All of it is entirely by choice: she's accountable for her actions. I compared her to The Joker and Kefka because that's exactly what she's like. Like Joker, she believes that all human beings, once overcome by despair, will destroy each other and organizes the entire sick game just to show that to the outside world (to which it's being broadcast) to break their spirits. Also like Joker, she has no reason for being as evil and insane as she is: she just is. And like Kefka, she sees other human beings as playthings that she can break and throw away. And you could literally take Kefka's Dissidia characterization and replace his "destruction" obsession with a "despair" one, and that'd be this chick.
The YMMV page currently says this:
- Complete Monster: Monokuma. He relishes in twisting the knife in the cruelest way possible at every opportunity. And, of course, the mastermind behind him: Junko Enoshima. They were one of the people who caused The Worst, Most Despair-inducing Incident in the History of Mankind, masterminded the game where the students began to snap and kill each other, and killed their own twin sister and the headmaster, all for the sake of causing despair!
- And as of Dangan Ronpa IF, we can also add sisterly abuse to their list, although admittedly this particular crime borders on Obliviously Evil, since Junko thinks she's being loving by abusing her sister and causing her despair, unable to comprehend how anyone could not enjoy such treatment.
That latter part isn't to be confused with a redeeming quality, too. Again to use Kefka as a comparison - it's the equivalent of him abusing Terra and forcing her to kill everything around her, and then wondering how she could not enjoy such "beautiful" raw, senseless destruction. It's both depraved and evil.
I'm sure she does qualify. Monokuma too, but technically it's the same thing. All of Monokuma's words and actions are her's and she's responsible for them all. It'd also help if I mentioned the kills Monokuma initiates and just how they're carried out.
- The first execution we see in the game is an unknown victim blindfolded and tied to a space shuttle that gets shot into space and then crashes back down to Earth, where we see nothing but the victim's bones remaining as Monokuma cackles maniacally. We later learn that the victim was the former headmaster and father of one of the protagonists.
- Mono attacks "Junko Enoshima" (later revealed to be her twin sister pulling a Twin Switch), she attacks him back, and he claims she's broken the rules by attacking the headmaster and thus must be punished, so he has her brutally impaled with spears. (Again, Junko did this to her twin sister. When called on this, she's nonchalant and almost amused over it, stating that her sister had to die for being a poor actress.)
- The first culprit to be executed is a baseball player named Leon. Mono puts a chain around his throat and drags him through a door into a batting cage. Once in the cage, more chains bind Leon so that he can't defend himself, and Mono shoots baseballs at him over and over again until he's beaten to death by the balls, and also possibly strangled by the force of the chains.
- The second culprit to be executed is a punk. He's tied to a motorcycle being driven by Mono. Mono drives towards a motorcycle death cage but ejects just as the motorcycle goes through with the culprit still tied to it. Then Mono speeds the cage up and up and up as the motorcycle goes so fast that the culprit eventually melts into butter. Mono later puts the butter on pancakes that he eats. Meaning yes, he eats the guy.
- The third culprit is a goth chick named Celes that Mono has burned at the stake like a witch. The girl is prepared to accept this death with dignity...and then Mono has a firetruck come in and ram her to death. He did this cruel bait and switch just to shatter her spirit in her last seconds.
- The fourth execution isn't a culprit: it's an artificial intelligence program that Mono has crushed by a bulldozer. Just to prove a point to the students and send them into further despair.
- In the bad ending of Chapter 5, Detective Kyouko Kirigiri (the former headmaster's daughter) is forced to go through "detention", where she's tied to a chair with her hands pinned to her desk as she's forced to sit through Mono's lecture on a crushing machine...which is right there, and Kirigiri's chair is on a conveyor belt moving slowly towards it. And then it finally crushes her.
- And the last execution is Junko herself, who willingly subjects herself to all the above mentioned death methods to torture herself and she lives through all of them up until detention, where the crushing machine's block crushes her to death. She's Laughing Mad and smiling the whole way through, except for the last second where she's like "Wait..." and then gets crushed, either realizing that her despair will be over once she dies, or maybe even wondering why the block wasn't dropping yet. She might have rigged it just so the last sensation she'd feel was the despair of facing the possibility that she wouldn't get the ultimate despair. Yes, she's that fucked up in the head.
She was responsible for all of that. She makes no excuses, and neither does the narrative. Another bit of side trivia is that aside from her Monokuma persona, her regular persona, and her "true persona" (the blank, empty, utterly depraved one), the other personas she puts on all seem to be mockeries of the surviving students whom she's facing. It's not just multiple personality disorder here: she specifically tailored the personas to be reflections of her adversaries. To mess with their heads and make them doubt themselves.
edited 29th Sep '13 9:51:19 PM by ANewMan
Ambar, thank God, I thought I was the only one who hasn't seen Breaking Bad. BTW, from having read stuff about the finale, seems like Walt somewhat redeems himself.

Since most of the Visual Novel examples are in subpages, I moved it to the Other Media sandbox.