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
Ok here's the whole thing with the heinousness part changed
Ok, here is my new and improved version.
Who is he? Aerbax, a virindi turned into an Eldritch Abomination due to mad sciency experiments. He was in the Long Runner MMORPG Asheron's Call, which ran from 1999 to 2017. He was first introduced in the second story arc, but didn't show up in person as a killable Big Bad until the sixth.
What did he do Aerbax started out as a mere virindi puppet that gained sentience due to a freak magical incident. After gaining sentience, he split off from the virindi directive and began doing Mad Scientist like experiments. He started by creating new monsters or more powerful versions of existing ones, which killed numerous people. but eventually went on to experimenting on humans. His most successful and infamous effort was probably turning Candeth Martine, an innocent human settler, into a completely insane, superpowered Humanoid Abomination, who eventually escaped his control, only to be manipulated by Gaerlan (an evil Empyrean who is the third Arc Villain). However, Martine wasn't his first attempt as in one quest you go to portal space and find Lilitha, a famous archer who mysteriously disappeared years ago and has apparently been trapped all this time and driven hopelessly insane by the horrific experiments Aerbax and his followers put her through, including removing and reattaching her limbs repeatedly. He later experimented on his fellow virindi, including combining them with shadows. In the "Favored Sons" arc (the sixth arc, where he finally appears in person) he commits even more atrocities, namely turning several creatures into superpowered monsters similar to Martine, which he calls his "Prodigal Sons", one of which is the tusker Oolutanga (usually called "King Bobo" by the other tuskers). Originally he was granted sentience in one of Aerbax's experiment, he managed to escape for a time, only to be recaptured and turned into Aerbax's "Prodigal Tusker", who is basically an evil superpowered Killer Gorilla. He also tries to create a "Prodigal Human" out of Dojiro Sangi , who would basically be Martine 2.0. In the quest the players find him before he is fully transformed. Unfortunately, the transformation is both irreversible and extremely painful, forcing the players to Mercy Kill him. While Aerbax doesn't have much in game dialogue, he seems to be a combination of Evilutionary Biologist and A God Am I, and basically views all other creatures as his playthings.
Redeeming Qualities None, unless being a virindi puppet was some how really horrible (which seems unlikely as they aren't sentient.)
Is he worse than the other villains? Yes. He has been doing bad things from behind the scenes since the second arc, acting more as a Greater-Scope Villain than Big Bad until the sixth arc. While the other Big Bads have created and turned people into monsters, Aerbax seems to have created the most, and while Gaerlan may have caused more destruction over all, (including causing Dereth to be invaded by elementals) most of it was unintentional due to his spell going awry. Additionally, he seems to have trapped the most people in some kind of Fate Worse than Death, Martine and especially Lilitha being the main examples.
Verdict? Yes
Well, I think that settles it.
to Aerbax.
Now that that's out of the way, does anyone else want to consider my Selene pic
◊?
Skin Taker and Aerbax, I guess. Now, let's go back to the 70's!
What is the work? Kamen Rider is, well... the very first Kamen Rider installment, and it's pretty damn long, having nearly 100 episodes. Takeshi Hongo is an athletic biochemistry prodigy born with the Improbably High I.Q. of 600, he's perfect in every sense of the word, and this perfection leads to him being captured by everyone's favorite terrorist organization, Shocker, and unwillingly transformed into one of their cyborgs, but thanks to the interference of his teacher, Professor Midorikawa, he's rescued before Shocker could brainwash him. Now Shocker's worst enemy, Hongo assumes the title of Kamen Rider to protect the people of Japan from Shocker and their plans. We already have the Great Leader and his Nazi buddy Colonel Zol as keeps, but now it's time for us to discuss The Heavy of the show's last story arc.
Who is he? Born in the Russian Empire, General Black was originally one of the many men who were conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, and even as a young soldier serving his country, Black already stood out from the rest as a sadistic bastard with no limits to his actions. A tactical, but psychopathic military strategist, Black used torture and other horrendous methods to strike fear into the hearts of not only the enemies of the Empire, but also the innocent farmers of Russia. Black's lethal efficiency caught the attention of Nikolai II himself, who awarded him with medals; Black had found the perfect place for someone like him, he hurt people and was praised for it, and he loved his job so much that he quickly rose to the highest position. When the Empire fell, Black was invited to join the terrorist organization Geldam, and he was even permitted to keep his rank and uniform, this was the perfect opportunity to satisfy his sadism again; needless to say, Black joined Geldam and travelled to the African deserts, training Geldam's soldiers there and becoming their most notorious supreme commander.
With all of his generals dead, the Great Leader proposes to reorganize Shocker and merge the two organizations to form Gel-Shocker in a deadly alliance, killing all Shocker members who were unworthy of living in the process, Black gladly accepted the offer and provided him with a new generation of soldiers and technology coming straight from Geldam. Called to oversee the initiation ceremony, Black first sends his underling, Ganikomol, to slaughter the Shocker soldiers who tried to escape from their fate; oh, and to avoid any traitors, all low-ranking Gel-Shocker soldiers need to take a drug called Gelper every three hours, or else they combust alive. His speech at the ceremony before being interrupted by Hongo? "Shocker will absorb the power of Geldam... and become Gel-Shocker! Gel-Shocker will definately conquer the world! To that end, we will murder, riot, and destroy as much as possible!".
When Hongo is seemingly killed by Ganikomol, Black delivers a letter and a present to his close friends expressing his condolescences, at least he's a Noble Demon right? Nope, the present is actually a bomb and it would have detonated everyone, including the little children affiliated with Hongo. Think that was a dick move? Black is given the task of eliminating the Shocker scientists, but releases them instead, giving them the hope of seeing their families again, but it was a sadistic trick; Black turns their bus into a gas chamber, killing everyone except for one man who realized what was going on and brought a gas mask with him. Black plans on spreading this gas over Tokyo to kill at least ten million people, but tries to make a deal with Hongo; he would only spare their lives if Gel-Shocker is allowed to brainwash Hongo and have him as one of their enforcers, and when that fails, Black tries to detonate an entire metro station filled with two million people; we see a demonstration of that, and it is not pretty.
Breaking a deathrow inmate out of prison on the day of his execution, Black brings him to the Gel-Shocker HQ and has him unwillingly converted into a cyborg monster with the sole goal of letting him rampage through Tokyo with the power of infecting other people with a gas that turns them into homicidal lunatics; Black later kidnaps a bank robber and converts him into a cyborg capable of using a corrosive gas that is powerful enough to reduce its victims to skeletons. When Black tests the gas on Gel-Shocker captives and it shows no effect, he recruits a scientist to fix the issue before ultimately betraying him, sending the cyborg to "try that power right way" by releasing the gas on an entire apartment complex, killing several people. Interested in expanding Gel-Shocker personnel, Black orders the mass kidnapping of civilians, literally storing them for him to perform surgery on possible recruits whenever he feels like it. For the next few episodes, Black is the mastermind behind "operations" to make Japan collapse.
- Operation T3: The assassination of important figures within each field of Japan, with the third victim being Hongo himself.
- Operation F: Beginning as a series of mysterious "locked room murders", the perpetrator is an artist converted into a cyborg by Black, driving him insane enough to cut his wrists and use his own blood as paint. The cyborg is capable of using his paintings to teleport, and the operation would end with the abduction of world-renowned scientists from a peace conference.
- Operation Pet: Using a cyborg disguised as seemingly harmless canary, the sounds emitted from him affect the minds of those around him to cause chaos and turn all of Tokyo into a Gel-Shocker base. Having caused a good deal of destruction, Black recreates his partner-in-crime to be even more dangerous, using him to spread a plague that turns people into zombie-like monsters, infecting a family and even the hospital staff when they tried to help the patients.
After causing so much chaos, Black sets his eyes on Hongo's allies, the Youth Rider Squad, and brainwashes them to be part of a new unit, the Youth Gel-Shocker Squad; using a cyborg to teach them at a "School of Terror", Black is training several children in terrorism for them to serve Gel-Shocker as Child Soldiers. Under the Great Leader's orders, Black is almost successful in making the children consume Gelper, which would result in all of them having to take it for the rest of their lives to avoid combusting, but fortunately Hongo arrives to stop the process. After targeting the Anti-Shocker Alliance and killing some of their members with the cyborgs, Black is inspired by a Nazi Germany airship to create his most nefarious plan yet: Black would use the "Devil's Fog" around Japan, which makes heavy objects float, on vehicles and then let them crash on the ground; we see a demonstration with a train to get an idea of what would happen.
Shortly after revealing his Kaijin form, Black begins collecting human blood to revive the defeated Gel-Shocker cyborgs, and he's stopped in the final episode, dying believing he would rather choose death as a path of glory and claiming that Gel-Shocker truly got the last laugh in the end. In the sequel, Kamen Rider V3, Black is briefly revived alongside Zol and a couple of other comrades to assist the Destron commander Doktor G in releasing a Deadly Gas across the country, being stationed in Osaka and agreeing with the other Shocker generals that they should execute Ambassador Hell, one of their own, for being captured; the Great Leader himself has to step in to stop them and they are all eventually destroyed yet again.
Mitigating Factors? Nope, this guy was born bad.
Heinous? Let's see, his only rival here is Zol, a Bad Boss who also brainwashed children to serve evil. But, unlike Zol, who was simply one of the three Shocker commanders, Black was not only the supreme commander of yet another organization, Geldam, but was also the sole field commander of Gel-Shocker; this guy manages to be worse than all of Shocker combined as he was responsible for reviving the organization under the Gel-Shocker banner when Hongo had already killed all of the Shocker commanders, providing the Great Leader with stronger operatives in the process, both in regular grunts and Kaijin, as Black's cyborgs are combinations of two animals instead of just one, unlike Shocker whose cyborgs were limited to one animal at a time; and the whole thing with all Gel-Shocker soldiers having to take a drug to keep themselves alive, which was not the case with the OG Shocker guys, is just... twisted.
Conclusion? Possibly the easiest
for a Showa commander.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on Sep 26th 2019 at 7:23:22 AM

Edited by PureGrainAlkaSeltzer on Sep 25th 2019 at 10:26:46 AM
I have no idea what I am doing