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. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
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
Gentle Laborer
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Guigoz. Was he an atheist who practiced black magic? ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Emperor Georgie Artémis Enkoom Evulz II
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Somehow, yes. While forbidding the mostly religious population from doing so.
Edited by GeorgieEnkoom on Sep 21st 2019 at 1:45:46 PM
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)
Yes to Georgie’s
Also...I’m thinking of two new rules? First? No plagiarism needs to be written explicitly into our rules. Citations and the odd sentence here and there are one thing but an EP cannot he lifted wholesale from another source.
Second? No more ‘to everyone I missed’...we need to specify who. If someone can’t read multiple pages, they don’t need to vote on everyone. That’s fine.
I thought sharks were my friends.
For the second rule, what if it's just to abstain?
RIP KissAnime.
to both of Lighty's rules.
Emperor Georgie Artémis Enkoom Evulz II
I agree with Lighty there, unless it's explicitly stated between each characters someone pulls a mass vote (for example to the characters I've missed between X and U, or ![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to the candidates I've missed from X to there).
If it's just to abstain, not saying anything at all works just as well, I think. Admittedly, I don't read this thread very often, but I've gotten the impression that abstains really don't mean much, and people stick to counting yays and nays. Forgive my ignorance if it isn't the case.
With that being said, to the two proposed rules. " to everyone I missed" feels kind of lazy and not very reassuring that the poster actually read all of the effort posts.
Goku Black
both proposed rules.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Yes to both Lighty's proposed new rules.
Edited by Bullman on Sep 21st 2019 at 6:34:22 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Yes to Lighty's proposed rules, having discussed the matter with him.
Particularly the latter. I need to make something clear here; I know the thread is hard to keep up with at times and not everyone will have time to read every candidate, but blanket "yes to everyone I missed" votes promote laziness and skipping over actually reading the EP. This can be genuinely damaging to the trope if candidates aren't given full communal scrutiny, as what happened when KH!Scar almost went up on an effortpost based almost entirely on misinformation and exaggeration.
Nobody is obligated to read every candidate. If you don't have time to read a full effortpost, nothing compels you to vote on it. But we need to cut out the blanket votes, now, because they're promoting attitudes that harm the thread's efforts as a whole.
Alright, I've stalled on this for long enough... time to pitch in my part to the Simon R. Green collab! I've got a few candidates, but let's go back to Secret Histories for this one.
So, Mir brought up Methuselah, one of the big bads, and an ancient entity he bargained with called the Heart. This is actually the focus of a plot twist in the very beginning of the series, in the first book, The Man with the Golden Torc. Our candidate is the Heart itself.
Who is the Heart? What has it done?
A bizarre, alien, crystalline entity, the Heart is the source of power of the ancient family of the Droods, including Eddie Drood himself, and the source of the golden armor that makes them so powerful, empowering them to protect the entire world. Seemingly not even sentient at first, the Droods are fighting off and killing people who attempt to invade the sanctum the Heart was kept in to destroy it. Obviously just evil, nondescript sorcerers who want to see the Droods destroyed, right?
Wrong. The Droods hold a very horrible secret, and at the heart of it is... well, the Heart. The Heart is alive, is very sapient, and not bound to Blue-and-Orange Morality at all. It's a childish sadist that has existed for millennia, crossing from dimension to dimension, wreaking unspeakable havoc and chaos across the realms it invaded and leaving countless broken "toys" behind it. Pursued by a strange entity that wants to see it destroyed for what it's done, the Heart came to Earth, saving the ancient Druids from extinction at the hands of the Roman Empire and gifting them the power to rule the world in secret, so long as they served it. The Heart has corrupted the Droods into its personal little cult, founding a legacy of murder as to whoever would stop it and even driving one man, William, insane with what it found, and empowering the aforementioned Methuselah to wreak even more havoc.
The worst thing, though... near the end of the book, Eddie finds out the truth of the golden armor the Droods wear. The Heart influenced the Droods in a way that every subsequent birth in the family would be of twins. One infant twin would be kept alive. The other would be sacrificed to the Heart itself, to use their power to create the golden armor for the surviving twin. And for generations, babies have been slaughtered as tribute to the Heart to create their armor, the souls of countless thousands of infants locked in eternal suffering within the Heart, made unable to pass on for centuries. Eddie rebels against the system and kills even his own family members—who, under the Heart's manipulation, are intending to stage a full genocide of all non-human, "unnatural" things in the world—where the Heart gleefully fesses up to everything and explains all of this was purely For the Evulz, controlling Eddie's golden armor to try and force him to kill Molly. Thankfully, said entity that was pursuing the Heart manages to find his way to Eddie (long story), empowering him to destroy the Heart and free all the souls it's entrapped.
Any mitigating factors?
Laughable. The Heart shows itself to be fully sapient in the end, cheerfully self-aware about how much of a monster it is, shown to be the kind of entity that "enjoyed pulling the wings off flies, or stamping on butterflies, just because it could." Obviously the standard is steep, but for the Starter Villain in Secret Histories with the kind of impact it has for the rest of the series? Wreaking havoc across entire dimensions, twisting the Droods into a murderous secret cult, empowering them for genocide, and the whole "generational And I Must Scream sacrifice of infants" thing leaves no question that it counts.
Conclusion?
Easy freaking keep. And more to come yet.
Thoughts?
Edited by Scraggle on Sep 21st 2019 at 5:38:02 AM
Emperor Georgie Artémis Enkoom Evulz II
Sure to the Heart. Easy keep indeed.
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)
I thought sharks were my friends.
Yay to the new rules, and the Heart.
RIP KissAnime.
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
There are times I don't say "to everyone I missed" not because I didn't read the discussion and stuff but because I want to vote but I don't want to write all those names down.
Things are really about to get Fun around here
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Yes to the Heart.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Yes to Lighty's rules and the Heart.
Barb(Its a thread joke you wouldn't get it)
to the SUPER ironically named Heart.
I think saying abstaining? Totally fine. Yes to the Heart
Goku Black
Heart
Ah weird to think this thing would leave such an impact on the series. It empowered both Methuselah and Adrian Drood (The founders of the family of immortals and droods as well) making it partially responsible for everything they do as well.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
The herat (geddit) and all other examples
Edited by Keshali on Sep 21st 2019 at 4:44:37 AM
Ultimate Moral Compass
Heart/Ma-Ti
Lord of Hell
Agreed to Lighty's proposed rules, especially to the first one.
Heart.
The Draftsman of Doom
Dredd, Guigoz, and, Heart, plus I approve of Lighty’s suggestions.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Sep 21st 2019 at 9:14:52 AM
Rawr.
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
to Lighty’s rules and the Heart
Edited by G-Editor on Sep 21st 2019 at 2:17:48 AM
