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 have two quick ones for today as I'm gonna have busy classes today and tomorrow. I'll start with an unusual example from what I usually bring to the table; a horrid domestic abuser from an Irish urban legend.
Back in June I brought up the Irish vampire legend of Abhartach, who may have been one of Bram Stoker's actual inspiration for Dracula. I also mentioned another such vampire in the Dearg Due, who herself doesn't count due to being a genuine Tragic Villain. Same can't be said for her husband, who isn't named but is only known as a chieftain (no one is named in the story, even the Dearg Due is more of a title).
Who is he ? What does he do ?
To preface, the woman who would become the Dearg Due was famous in the Irish land of Waterford for her beauty and purity, whose heart belonged to one man; a lowly but kind young peasant man, with nothing to offer her but his love. But her father cared only for wealth and power, and married her off to a man who was just the opposite - the notoriously cruel, far older and wealthier clan chieftain. In return daddy dearest gets the wealth in land he wanted and the chieftain gets a new toy to play with. Their marriage was about a match made in Heaven as Sansa and Ramsay. The chieftain kept his young wife locked alone in a tower, only entering to feed her and torment her. His favourite pastime was cutting her and watching her blood pour over her pale skin. This went on for some time, weeks turning into months of the same routine and the only thing keeping the woman going was her hope that her true love would save her. But that time never came, and all the woman wished for was death; some versions say she killed herself by hanging, poison, throwing herself from her tower, or simply starving herself to death.
In all cases though, the chieftain remarried before the woman's funeral. The only one who mourned the woman was her former lover, and her people, out of guilt for not helping her, didn't give her a proper burial; see, ancient superstition that you had to bury the recently deceased with stones over their graves least they rise again. And a year later, the woman did just that, becoming a vampire now known as the Dearg Due, she initially took her revenge on her father before hunting down her husband - whom she found abusing his new wife in the same manner he did to her, before she kills the cheiftian himself. Unfortunately her desire for revenge, her lost innocence, and newfound bloodlust turned the Dearg Due into a shadow of her former self; she's no longer that innocent pure girl her people knew, but was now a blood thirsty vampire said to terrorize Waterford to this day.
Mitigating qualities ?
Nothing.
Heinousness
Okay, so admittedly he could have been worse, and he's not exactly going around raping, murdering and torturing, men, women and children, left, right and center. Hell I gave a character based on him a slight dose of Adaptational Villainy in a story I wrote. But I think this may be one of those cases where the crimes may be small but are personal and cruel enough to cross some kind of line.
The character is noted to be a cruel man but his main crime is constantly torturing his wife for his amusement for months at least, destroying her innocence and leading to her eventual death. It's his cruelty and his wife's lost innocence is what gets emphasized in the story. And following his wife's death, he remarried and in some versions tried to repeat the process with a new wife. But even then, I think the fact the Dearg Due becomes a revenge driven monster terrorizing the land may also hinder the heinous standard, even if she is a tragic figure.
Maybe he works better as a Hate Sink, but what do you guys think ?
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."And now for my first song candidate. Taken from Madame Macabre's song "Regret Game (A Slenderman Inspired Song)
''. It's a collab with fellow artist Lance Light. It manages to tell a similar but better plot than the Slenderman movie made by Sony; kids think it's a good idea summon Slenderman, and pay the iron price for it.
Take three guesses who I'm about to talk about.
Who is Slenderman ? What does he do here ?
The songs narrator (voiced by Madam Macabre herself) is a kid who joins her friends in an infamously haunted woods for a game, which involves summoning Slenderman. While her friends thought it was a good idea, she was reluctant but gives into peer pressure. Ignoring the warnings, they summon Slenderman in what the narrator seems to refer to as "The Regret Game". At which point, Slenderman begins a cat and mouse game, chasing the narrator and her friend through the woods and killing them. All the while Slenderman (voiced by Lance Light) verbally mocks them for thinking summoning him would be a fun game.
- Left these warnings all around/Now your bodies won't be found/You thought you were out of luck/Now your friends don't give a fuck!/You came looking out for me/Screaming "Mercy, mercy please!"/Stupidity your expertise/Your curiosity a disease!
The narrator tries running and hiding through the woods, in what she describes as Hell on Earth with her friends being picked off, before she collapses and prays out to God to save her. Slenderman answers her with.
- Your prayers are worthless/There's no leads/When you came looking out for me/Keep on running through the trees/There's no end of it can't you see ?/Keep on running if you dare/Keep on playing without care/Keep on coughing till you bleed!
The last few verses have the narrator make it out of the woods, but still traumatized by her experience. While she swears she'll never return again, it's also implied Slenderman will haunt her for the rest of her days.
Mitigating qualities ?
None to speak of; the personality he displays in his lyrics is one of pure malice, and mockery of the kids who thought summoning him was a good idea for a game. According to Madam Macabre herself; "see my inspiration for the song was stupid kids thinking that summoning bloodthirsty abominations would be a good idea because they assumed it would be reserved and reasonable. But the reality of monsters is that they'd freaking annihilate you without a second thought."
So really that's all there is too it.
Edited by Beast on Sep 30th 2019 at 8:23:45 AM
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."Sure to Beast's two candidates.
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)I'm in for Slenderman!
As for the mythology candidate, eh...Unsure, didn't we vote down the mythology creature that inspired Dracula because lack of evidence for the mythological creature like you know...Storybooks or poetry?
"Making screw-ups and mistakes was I ever really good at. Because everything I touch went to hell."
Song Slendy. Kids who thinks it would be fun to summon an homicidal monster ? Very wise.
Hi guys, I'm back from my hiatus and I have an EP that I wanted to post. I wasn't going to come back just yet but I just wanted to get this off my chest, regardless of whether or not it gets approved or not. So here it is. And I checked and the search didn't say anyone proposed this film yet.
What's The Work?
Emelie is a 2015 American horror film starring Sarah Bolger as the titular antagonist.
The story follows siblings Jacob (The eldest), Sally (The middle child) and Christopher (The youngest) who when their parents go out for dinner are looked after by a new babysitter. She appears to be at first a cool aloof babysitter who lets them get away with things and do whatever they want, however she soon acts quite weird and strange. The kids then soon discover just how psychotic this girl is and that she is out to take one of them.
Who Is He? What Has He Done?
Emelie was once a single mother living with her baby. However one night she fell asleep on the couch and accidentally suffocated it. This caused Emelie to snap psychologically. She eventually met the Skinny Man who offered to help her make a new child, but she was incapable of giving birth and could not adopt. So instead the two planned to find and abduct a child so she can raise them as her own. However they were caught and fled to another city or state with new passports and began their hunt again, and they found their target in the form of 4 year old boy Christopher.
To enact their plan Emelie finds the boy and his siblings' new babysitter Anna and she and Skinny Man kidnap her, in which she dies inside of Skinny Man's car trunk, and Emelie poses as Anna while Skinny Man will watch the parents and buy enough time for her to kidnap Christopher. Emelie goes and begins her babysitting facade. She shows off strange behavior to the children like telling Sally not to smile during a picture she takes of the three kids (As possible foreshadowing of not liking her), turning off the internet modem (Clearly as a way to prevent them from contacting help) and when she's on her period and needs a tampon, she makes the eldest child Jacob, an 11 year old, give her and unwrap it and inserts it right in front of him.
Emelie lets the children run wild, letting them eats as much junk as they want, let them draw on the walls and get away with certain things. Emelie then feeds Sally's hamster to Jacob's python and forces Sally to watch, breaking the poor girl's heart (Doing this to again possibly show that she outright despises Sally and did so out of spite or cruelty). When Jacob begins to realise Emelie is not Anna, Emelie shows Sally and Christopher a sex tape of their father and another woman, revealing that he had an affair. Christopher thinks it's funny due to being too young to understand but Sally knows is understandably shocked and horrified (Her showing the sex tape could be her trying to ruin their innocence as children) and Jacob turns it off, angering Emelie and making her become more alert.
Emelie gets the children ready for bed and Jacob, now fully aware that Emelie is dangerous, finds his dad's gun and aims it at her. Emelie tries to taunt Jacob into shooting her but Jacob cannot do it. When the kids' usual babysitter Maggie comes to the house to check on them, Emelie forces them to not tell her anything, hitting and threatening Jacob when he tries to refuse. Maggie of course can more or less see that Emelie is not Anna given that they are friends but Emelies tries to play it off as if she's a friend of Anna who is covering for her. Jacob is able to slip a secret message into Maggie's bag and she reads it, but Emelie attacks her and knocks her out.
Emelie then forces the kids to drink juice laced with sleeping syrup, drugging them and putting them to sleep. Emelie even tries to suffocate Jacob by smothering him with a pillow, but thankfully he survives and vomited up the drugs in his system and enlists help from his best friend Howie. Maggie eventually wakes up and attempts to fight Emelie to save th kids, but Emelie kills her and attempts to take Christopher but Jacob has hidden him well. She calls Skinny Man to say she needs more time and so Skinny Man crashes himself into the parents' taxi, committing suicide in the process just to slow them down.
Emelie takes Sally hostage and threatens to kill her if Jacob doesn't give her Christopher, showing him Maggie's corpse and Howie's bloodstained jacket (Heavily implying she killed him) to him as a warning. Emelies says to meet her in the backyard in five minutes where she will trade Sally for Christopher, but Jacob is able to subdue her using a a trash can filled with fireworks and is able to rescue Sally. When Jacob puts his siblings in his father's car to get away, an injured Emelie tries to shoot Jacob with his father's gun but is hit by the car and runs away, defeated and limping. She is not caught by the police, but given her injuries she may have passed out and eventually been arrested.
Freudian Excuse? Redeeming Qualities?
Her only supposedly redeeming factor is that she lost her baby by accidentally suffocating it. She supposedly went mad from it and that's why she so psychotic in the film. However I'm going to try and convince you why that's not enough of an excuse to save her.
Her so-called madness is barely really a thing, as she clearly quite conscious of her actions and while murderous and violent it mostly sane. Sure there's her strange behaviour and things like showing Jacob her putting on a tampon and flushing blood down the toilet and stuff, but most of what she does that seems weird is for a reason. Her turning off the internet is so they can't contact anyone. Her removing the laces of their shoes is so they can't use them if they need to make a run for it because they're kids so of course they would probably put on their shoe if they needed to run. She's not mad in the sense that she is just downright unhinged and crazy, she's more sociopathic and mentally ill but still sane and conscious enough.
Her goal of wanting a replacement child could be seen as sad.....if she wasn't a complete asshole and hypocrite with children. She can be downright abusive and spiteful to them, and yet she wants to kidnap and raise a child. Also she has no qualms hurting or killing them, so any affection she could show to a child is nothing but a lie or some of twisted narcissistic sense of love, akin to a Narcissistic Parent who don't see their children as people but as possession and therefore do not care for their wellbeing and will abuse or hurt them if they don't meet up their standards.
Long story short, she says she wants a child yet has no problem murdering those she doesn't want. So what would stop her from murdering said child she kidnaps if they don't meet her standards or wish to go back to their real family?
Heinousness
Her actions start off as more callous and apathetic than downright heinous. Though it shows just how much she really doesn't care about a child emotionally. Emelie feeds Sally's hamster to Jacob's python and forces her to watch it, even when she's screaming for her to stop. Even Jacob who tends to be annoyed by his sister thinks that Emelie went too far and believes her actions were cruel. This action shows her lack of empathy and remorse has she blankly watches the python eat the hamster and does not apologise at all to Sally, and if this shows what she's like with animals then imagine how uncaring and apathetic she would be if she was raisng a child.
She then has Christopher and Sally watch a sex tape that their father made, with a woman that isn't their mother which shows that he was having an affair. First she shows how callous she is when it comes to taking care of a life, now she shows how little she respects childhood innocence. Bare in mind she shows this to not only Sally, who she appears to more or less hate, but to Christopher, the kid she wants to kidnap and raise as a child. If she's going to show him of all people this sex tape, then it's clear her idea of parenting is really fucked up. Christopher is too young to even understand the context of the tape but it will affect him psychologically later in life and could lead to him regressing emotionally and possibly becoming a sexual deviant if he was exposed to any more of that smut.
Emelie then finally begins to show more of her true colors and becomes abusive and dangerous. She slaps Jacob for talking back to her, she drugs the kids with sleeping syrup which if given too much can be fatal or dangerous to their immune system and even tries to straight-up smother Jacob with a pillow. She doesn't want Sally and Jacob, so it's clear that given that she now probably hates those two will no doubt murder them. She also tries to goad Jacob into shooting her, either to try and traumatize him with her murder on his hands or possibly to scare him and prove that he's a coward who doesn't have the guts to shoot a stranger to save his siblings.
She goes straight into murder territory with killing Maggie and possibly Howie given that she has his bloodstained coat and we never see him in the film again. Emelie appears to enjoy envoking fear and terror into others as she leaves Maggies' body for Jacob to find and drops the coat there to basically taunt him that she's possibly killed Jacob's best friend and ruin his chances of getting help. She is able to get Skinny Man to kill himself just to buy her more time to kidnap Christopher. She also takes Sally hostage and threatens to kill her if Jacob doesn't give her Christopher, and given how she shows how much he appears to hate her then means it. She also tries once again to kill Jacob when he attempts to drive off with his siblings, only relenting when she is too injured to actually stand a chance that succeeding.
Final Verdict
If any of this seems like it's partially exagerrated, forgive him as I'm using some comparison and examples. I do mean what I about her one supposed redeeming factor being in no way able to redeem her and that's it's utter bullshit that is averted by the fact she is willing to endanger, abuse, hurt and kill children, even the one she is trying to take. I watched this movie and believed she stood out in my opinion. I think it's a yes but if anyone has any counter arguments then let's hear it.
Edited by UltimateDemonBeast65 on Oct 1st 2019 at 1:27:48 AM
Well, after reading carefully I'll give Emelie a
. She seems to see children just as something to own. The fact she's willing to kill them if they don't meet her expectations shows that she's somewhat of a sociopathic Control Freak.
Emelie. She seems to be a wannabe textbook abusive parent.
Slenderman
chieftain.
"Her only supposedly redeeming factor is that she lost her baby by accidentally suffocating it. She supposedly went mad from it and that's why she so psychotic in the film. However I'm going to try and convince you why that's not enough of an excuse to save her. "
Yeah, uh, I disagree. I've seen the film and Emelie is clearly mentally ill and that's how it's portrayed. Yes to Augustina and Falstaff, Slenderman...but the husband? Eh, not seeing it, not when compared with others in the actual mythology, too.

Yay to Falstaff.
RIP KissAnime.