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
Cut the President from Hotel Rawanda. I'd say that the hotel employee should probably be cut too; he sounds like he's massively overshadowed. The concentration camp leader is the only one who sounds like me might be a keep, though not having seen the film I cannot attest to whether that is true.
edited 12th Oct '13 9:37:22 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
On that The Witches example, I have to say that, despite my usual feelings about CM's coming from children's books, the Grand High Witch is more than heinous enough. My only qualm is that the work is intended to be comical, albeit darkly, and so I wonder if the audience is intended to take their villainy seriously.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The GHW is definitely portrayed seriously, but my one quibble is that Dahl-verse witches are implied to be Always Chaotic Evil. The one witch who displays any morals is Miss Irvine, the GHW's put-upon assistant, and she was only in The Film of the Book, added against Dahl's wishes on top of that.
edited 12th Oct '13 9:32:53 PM by HamburgerTime
Okay, we are down to one last Film entry: Sylvia Ganush.
Shaoken voted keep, Ambar and Hamburger Time voted cut, Lighty and I aren't sure.
Once we decide on her then Sandbox.Film Monsters can be swapped.
edited 12th Oct '13 9:36:47 PM by TVRulezAgain
With Occasional Exister's vote I'd say we have enough votes to cut Shiranami from the Naruto subpage. I'm putting the request in now. With that cut, the Naruto entries should be good, at least until we get more information on Tobi/Obito.
Which brings me to...Bleach. That shonen series I used to like, and which then went downhill at such a rapid pace. I'll admit right off the bat that I have no time for this series; anything after Ichigo vs Grimmjow round three I could not care less about. That being said, it's got a page, and some of the entries need rewrites. I'm not disputing that either of the following characters qualify, but jeez the entries are poor.
Let's start with Shreiker. Remember when Hollows were actually dangerous and recieved characterisation?
- The Hollow Shrieker was shown to have been a Complete Monster even before he turned into a Hollow. A serial killer who stabbed a woman named Shibata to death and got off on it, his greatest regret was being killed before being able to do the same to the woman's young son, Yuichi. After he became a Hollow, he sealed poor Yuichi's soul into the body of a parakeet and lied to him, saying that if he could escape from him for three months, he'd revive his mother - and Shrieker would kill and eat the souls of anyone trying to help the child. He gets a very appropriate comeuppance, however - after Ichigo kills him, he is sent to Hell by Rukia for the serious crimes he committed whilst still alive, because the Zanpakuto can only cleanse Hollows of sins committed whilst being Always Chaotic Evil. Shrieker is the only Hollow seen to receive this treatment, which says a lot about how bad he was - even Grand Fisher, listed below, was only a Complete Monster whilst a Hollow (or otherwise hadn't committed sufficiently serious sins whilst human).
Right away, we've got some problems here. It references the trope name, it references the Grand Fisher, who a) isn't listed anymore, and b) shouldn't be called a CM in the entry even if he was one. Also, the fact that the series decides he should be sent to hell isn't really relevant to any of our criteria (especially since the Hell thing was dropped fairly quickly from the series; I don't remember it even being mentioned afterwards). With that in mind, here's a rewrite.
- Shrieker might have just been a Hollow, but he pushed the envelope when it came to evil. A Serial Killer in life, he died shortly after murdering a woman named Shibata, when her infant son Youichi trips him out of a window. Stealing Youichi's soul and putting it inside of a parakeet, the Hollowfied Shrieker promises that if Youichi can escape him for three months at a time, he'll bring the child's mother back to life (something he can't do). Able to track Youichi's soul, Shrieker kills and devours anybody who tries to help Youichi, feeding off the psychological torment it causes, as much as the actual souls. Targetting Chad, Ichigo, and Rukia for attempting to aid Youichi, Shrieker set the heinous bar higher than any Hollow before or since.
And then there's Szayel. Again, a definite qualifier, but this entry:
- Szayel Aporro Granz, the 8th Espada. As a Mad Scientist for the arrancar, Szayel likes nothing more than pulling the organs out of people via voodoo dolls and then smashing them to bits. In particular, before the organ-breaking began, he toyed with his enemies' heads by ripping apart one out of two voodoo dolls in half, only to reveal that the only parts that can be felt from a voodoo doll are the toy-like organs on the inside. Beforehand, he had specifically modified his underlings to serve as healing aids - by devouring them whole, he'd be able to heal himself. Now, in regards of what he did to poor Nemu...well, bluntly put, one of his abilities allowed him to invade any convenient host (the petite Nemu) that had maintained physical contact with him during his death, devour Nemu from the inside to reconstruct his original body, horribly enlarging Nemu's stomach and emaciating her to near-death, and then burst fully grown from her mouth head-first, leaving Nemu an anorexic husk, whose condition was so bad that she had to get groped by her father to get healed back to normal. What's worse is that the amount of time it took for that to finish was just a tad bit too long, giving the impression that he was initially trying to burst through her "special opening", before deciding to move out of her mouth instead. He also deconstructs the trope of Avenging the Villain by stating that he is the younger brother of Ilfort, an arrancar that Renji had killed, but has no intention of avenging him. In fact, he infected his brother with mini-spy cameras in order to gain an advantage in their fight, even comparing the loss of his brother with the loss of a box. All in all, he is so terrible that he is one of two of the Espada to end up in Hell (the second being Aaroniero Arruruerie).
Okay. The fact that Mayuri may have groped/raped/whatever Nemu isn't on Szayel. That's on Mayuri. He doesn't deconstruct Avenging the Villain; he perhaps subverts it, but that's a different thing. And good god—whether he was trying to come out of Nemu's mouth or vagina takes a back seat to the fact that he possessed her and vampirically drained her of life energy. Aaroniero being damned to Hell is also totally irrelevant. Priorities, people.
- Szayel Aporro Granz is the Eighth Espada and the resident Mad Scientist among the Arrancar. A sadist and a player of games, Szayel creates voodoo dolls out of his victims, then proceeds to torture them to death, rupturing one organ at a time, as he cheerfully does to Renji Abarai and Uryu Ishida. He's also the worst boss of any of the Espada, modifying the bodies of his subordinates so that in a pinch he can convert them to raw energy and devour them with ease, using their lives to fuel his own. When his battle against Mayuri Kuortsuchi goes bad, Szayel uses his rebirthing technique to possess Kurotsuchi's daughter Nemu, infiltrating her body, and draining her of her life's energy, before bursting forth, reborn. A sickening Evilutionary Biologist, who regards himself as the ultimate lifeform, Szayel takes pride in his unique brand of depravity, and regards everyone, including his late brother Ilforte Granz, as beneath him, and, ultimately, disposable.
One thing that Lightysnake and I disagree on—whether we should mention the fact that both Shreiker and Szayel are damned to Hell. Lightysnake sees it as proof of their irredeemability, which it presumably is (I'm sure he'll explain his position in more depth in a later post). I think that it's a case of You Monster!, and that if we allow it, people will take that to mean that damning to Hell in any medium is indicative of CM status. I also think that it is problematic due to inconsitencies in the manga. Originally, only those Hollows who had committed grevious sins in life were damned to Hell. Yet Arrancar like Szayel are amalgamations of dozens or hundreds of Hollows, given human form following a lengthy process of evolution that allows a new personality to emerge—there shouldn't be an original soul to damn. It gets worse when you recall that Ninth Espada Aaronerio Arrurei was also sent to Hell, despite his questionable moral agency, and the fact that none of the lines he crosses even approach the ones that Szayel does; the worst crime he commits is using an impersonation of Rukia's former commander to disorient her in a fight.
Thoughts?
edited 12th Oct '13 9:39:38 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
the Witches are all Child Hater types but the GHW takes it to fanatic extremes and she's far more evil than any other witch. The others go on with her out of fear. Also, it's not that the species is driven to be evil. They just find children repugnant and want to kill them for it. Keep in mind, some of them just turn the kids into something else, but the GHW makes it clear she expects the kids to turn into mice and die as well.
Good rewrites, too.
Okay. In that case, I'll go request for the Film Sandbox to be swapped with the Film page.
WE DID IT!!!!!
Praise be to whoever you worship. And while you're at it, everyone give yourselves a pat on the back. Monster/Film is actually good to go. Anybody else feeling a bizarrely great sense of accomplishment?
EDIT: Heck with it. I am making popcorn. I'd offer you all some, but alas, the limitations of communicating over the Internet.
edited 12th Oct '13 10:37:19 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
As much as I am happy about this, but there are some entries that aren't done still.
For example, I've asked repeatedly about ImageLinks.Complete Monster. I'll try one last time - is there anything else to do there (people have been adding images without consulting the topic repeatedly, including many violating the Just A Face And A Caption rules), or can it be closed like the other Complete Monster pages?
Also, Anime And Manga Monsters is still up. It's an alphabetized finished version of Monster.Anime And Manga, but it still needs missing good examples added.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

edited 12th Oct '13 7:25:22 PM by HamburgerTime