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
Didn't we say that there a CM can't be an always chaotic evil group back when we were discussing Shan-Yu? The whole group is evil, a Complete monster has to transcend the heinous standard, and the Cm's actions have to be the most evil thing(s) done in the story.
EDIT: I'm going to clean-up a few character pages, and I just want to get my facts straight on this. A Character Subjective belongs on the Subjective page, and not the Character page, because, despite it being a characterization, the characterization itself only has basis only in the way the audience thinks about them. Woobie, Ensemble Dark Horse, Scrappy, etc.
From The YMMV Home page: "We want the tropes listed [In the Work's main page] to be one hundred percent present in the work without coming down to personal opinion." I'm going to assume that the rules for the work page apply to the character page as well
edited 18th Jul '12 2:12:08 PM by DrPsyche
But all of the Things in the movies are an extension of the original Thing. Agent Smith from The Matrix is a Complete Monster, but by the end of the third movie, he's literally the entire population of the world.
IMO, Mr. Smith, the aliens in Independence Day, and probably the Thing as well are not examples of Complete Monster characters.
HodorOkay, fair enough. I just deleted Smith and the aliens from their respective pages. Should I delete the Sex-traffickers in Taken as well?
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I doubt that very much. We have debated over a characters actions going up to Blue and Orange Morality. If we can understand the reasons and morals of an alien, then we can see if they qualify. For example: Galactus: killed millions of lifeforms, but he's above good and evil, and is more of a force of nature, and is therefore not a CM. The Faceless hunter from Brave and the Bold, warlord, sadist, and conqueror, who wants to cause destruction. People have judged him as a CM.
Please Remove Scar, he has been debated, and people have judged him as not meeting the heinous standard, I have made a few posts telling other tropers to get him off the YMMV page for lion king. Thank you for considering it.
edited 18th Jul '12 2:34:26 PM by DrPsyche
It's not only humans. It is, however, a requirement of Complete Monster that the character have independent will. Being part of a hive organism, being programmed, or lacking the ability to exercise moral judgement automatically disqualifies someone.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"With the aliens of Independence Day, we aren't really given any notion of their motivation that would give any way of judging to what extent they are similarly sapient to humans or even whether they have some justification. Similar situation with the aliens in Cowboys and Aliens- it's a clear case of Aliens Are Bastards.
Smith is more like a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds at best, and at worst, is in Blue-and-Orange Morality territory.
@Chaotic Queen- Why are you bringing up Taken in this context? I'm disputing examples of creatures where you don't even know if they are comparable sapient to humans/have an outlook that is alien from humanity, and that has nothing to do with whether an example of human villains would count.
Edit- I thought you were being sarcastic, maybe I misinterpreted your tone.
edited 18th Jul '12 2:40:12 PM by Jordan
HodorA Hive Mind is very difficult to classify as a CM, because it is not a singular entity and you therefore can't assign blame for its actions to any particular character. I'm reminded of the infamous Borg Queen incident from the Star Trek TNG films, when they needed a "face of the enemy" for the protagonists to interact with. It struck me as a cheapening of the original concept; the Borg are far scarier when they are an remorseless, impersonal force then when they're ruled by a single being with a comprehensible morality, even if it's alien.
In summary, no, I can't see how a Hive Mind can ever be a Complete Monster, unless it's dominated by a singular being with something approximating a conventional moral framework.
edited 18th Jul '12 2:47:16 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"''"Why are you bringing up Taken in this context? I'm disputing examples of creatures where you don't even know if they are comparable sapient to humans/have an outlook that is alien from humanity, and that has nothing to do with whether an example of human villains would count. Edit- I thought you were being sarcastic, maybe I misinterpreted your tone."''
Because someone said an entire group can't qualify. I'm legitimately asking.
edited 18th Jul '12 2:44:08 PM by ChaoticQueen
The thing about The Thing (if you'll pardon the pun) is that it's far more alien than, say, Frieza, Scar, or most other nonhuman villains. It's a bodysnatching parasite that literally lives off Body Horror. We can't, for instance, hold sacrificing its own kind against it, because it's impossible to know whether it even has a concept of individuality. Hell, spreading fear and paranoia amongst its prey is standard predator behaviour - it just happens to be an effective hunting method when the enemy has the advantage of weaponry and numbers.
What's precedent ever done for us?![]()
Oh, I see. My apologies. I think that might be a different case in that I believe (from what I've heard of the movie) that this is a smallish group of criminals, and a gang or the like could potentially qualify.
Now if the example was like "the nation of Albania", that would probably be a problem.
edited 18th Jul '12 2:46:21 PM by Jordan
Hodor

The Thing is pretty much the most starfishy of Starfish Aliens.
What's precedent ever done for us?