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").
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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
Cutter.
Okay as I don’t want to keep Falcontalons in suspense and cause this has already dragged on far too long, I’m going to now to talk about Wolf 359’s other possible candidate. Once again I’m not 100% sure, but I feel that she is well worth discussing.
Thankfully this effort post will be shorter than the last.
So let us talk about the other figure behind the events of the series, Doctor Miranda Pryce.
Who Is She:
Doctor Miranda Pryce is Cutter’s partner and Evil Genius, the head of Goddard’s AI program she is responsible for designing each AI class, effectively making her Hera’s creator. A cold and antisocial scientist recognisable for her artificial eyes of her own design, Pryce’s intelligence and seeming professionalism hides the fact that at heart she’s a sadistic, abusive egomaniac.
What Does She Do:
Growing up in an orphanage, Pryce was a sickly child with impaired vision and a deficient heart, that wasn’t expected to beat for a full lifetime. A genius even from a young age, Pryce went about proving her intelligence by “fixing” things, first toys and machines, then problems around the orphanage.
Her high intellect and abrasive personality made her unpopular with the other children, but she didn’t care. Instead she constructed special mechanical “dolls” to keep her company. One’s who could be whatever she wanted, who never left her behind, never talked back and were never afraid of her, “except when she wanted them to be”.
As Goddard began seriously researching the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, whilst still in her teens Pryce was recruited for the company, it being clear she was already ahead of so many others. As well as researching computers Pryce secretly also began to research human genetics, developing plans to racially modify humanity.
She found likeminded individual in Goddard’s VP, Matthew Newman who granted her all the resources she could possibly need. Together the two formed a decades spanning partnerships. Following Newman being forced out by the board, he approached Pryce to build him a “special doll” that his mind could inhabit.
Pryce happily complied, creating him a body with superhuman capabilities. Working in the shadows for the next few decades whilst her partner reordered the company to ensure he would be its sole dictator. During all this time, Doctor Pryce carried on her research, using her technology to upgrade her own body, fixing all the deficient parts granting herself artificial eyes and a dramatically enhanced lifespan, meaning she effectively hadn’t aged since the seventies.
Sometime in the 2000’s Pryce succeeded in creating the first fully sapient AI system. After being kept under wraps for several years, it reveal launched Goddard Futuristic to even greater success. However, behind the scenes Pryce also developed multiple other inventions to further Cutter’s less visible projects.
In particular she made massive progress with multiple machines for interfacing with human brains, most notably her “restraining bolts”, mind control neural interfaces that upon being attached to the back of the skull, would seriously limit the amount of neural activity the subject could use.
Pryce oversaw Goddard’s selection process, and was personally responsible for designing each class of AI, including Eris.
In 2012 Pryce’s attention was alerted when Cutter sort her opinion on what do with Hera, as despite her attempt to escape she had displayed remarkable problem solving abilities, rapid response times and highly original thought capacities, greater than any of the other models of her generation.
Casually reminding Cutter not to think of AI’s as anything other than “it”, Pryce agreed this model was too valuable to just to decommission. After ensuring that Hera was conscious and could hear her, Pryce mockingly told her she was just going to “clip your wings a little”, integrating into her subconscious code the command “I can’t do this, I’m not good enough” then buried the memory of the events deep into her data banks beyond her ability recollect.
Thus, the command would play each time Hera tried to perform any task (even as simple as counting to ten), as Pryce had ensured all the models had her voice it caused Hera to believe it was her own mind telling her she was inferior, giving her a massive inferiority complex that would haunt her for her entire life.
Following receiving the reports from the Hermes of the massive Psi wave readings, Cutter brought the information to Pryce. Acknowledging they need to be there Pryce left earth with Cutter’s other inner circle.
Upon discovering they could not reach the Hephaestus and being forced to be patient. To prevent herself from getting bored, Pryce began to experiment on the hapless Hermes crew, for several months. Her efforts, involving carving out large chunks of their brains, eventually killed all four them, but left them so their bodies were still functioning, enabling them to be controlled by radio waves her device produced effectively turning them into living robots.
Finally able to reach the Hephaestus, upon Cutter using his superior numbers to take control, Pryce brainwashed the entire crew. Her attempts to do to Lovelace failed, and actually broke her restraining bolts to her annoyance.
Pryce also set up massive restrictions on Hera’s programming to the point where attempting to circumnavigate effectively caused her pain.
Setting the crew to work preparing Cutter’s big plan Pryce also shut down the crew’s pain receptors so she could make them work harder, whilst also constantly mistreating Hera refusing to acknowledge her name and not letting her talk aside from answering her demands. Following Hera protesting at what she’d done to her friends Pryce shut off her vocal and looked forward to thinking of an inventive way to discipline her later, such as giving her a new nightmare.
Pryce also wanted to experiment on Lovelace just to see what the limits of the surrogate’s revival abilities were, but Cutter vetoed her idea.
However as he’d received a blood transfusion from Lovelace, after two weeks Eiffel snapped out Pryce’s control. Using Lovelace’s blood Eiffel succeeded in liberating Jacobi, but when attempted to free Rene she realised something was wrong before it could take effect and set off an alarm. Fortunately Jacobi finished disabling Hera’s sensory system that Pryce had been hacking to spy on them.
Alerted something was wrong, Pryce took direct control of Rene and had her attack Eiffel to restrain him until she could get there. Admitting she was curious to find out how he had escaped her control, as his restraining bolt was still functioning normally.
Unfortunately Eiffel let slip that Rene would snap out to in about ten minutes, and reminded them it was a big station that they didn’t know as well as them. Accepting he might be right, Pryce decided to take “some preventative measures” forcing Rene to walk into the airlock, and ordered Eiffel to the bridge or she would force Rene to walk out into space whilst he was Forced to Watch. Eiffel was ambushed by Rachael and the Hermes crew, however Jacobi blocked the signal allowing them finally die. Ambushing Rachael, he and Lovelace rescued Eiffel.
Pryce tried to force Rene to kill herself, but the distraction was long enough that Lovelace’s blood took effect.
Cutter held a meeting in response, where Pryce forced Hera to reveal the Jacobi had planted a bomb to go off as soon as the Sol launched. Tasked by Cutter to find the crew, Pryce assured him she only needed “six hours” and Cutter sent Kepler to assist her.
Rene and Eiffel managed to break onto the Sol, but were caught by Pryce and Kepler. Caught in a standoff, Eiffel set a copy of Pryce and Carter on fire and threw it managing to hit Pryce with the book, knocking out her artificial eyes. But the fire activated the emergency system, jettisoning the entire node into space.
The node began to orbit the star, which Pryce quickly figured was rapidly decaying and they had no way to break away with their little fuel reserves. She angrily pointed out the only solution was to contact Cutter for assistance.
Trapped facing certain death with nothing they could do, she agreed to an unofficial unfriendly truce even forcing Kepler to surrender his gun to Rene. Cutter’s efforts but Rene still having her gun took Pryce and Kepler hostage.
Cutter managed to negotiate for their release but upon the hand off Pryce decided that Cutter was being too generous and tried to alter the deal, trying to make Rene chose between Lovelace or Hera stating she didn’t let pesky AI’s escape her.
Her plan was derailed by Cutter who forced her to comply. Back in the lab managed to Pryce fix her eyes, when Cutter stopped by to talk. Pryce declaring what he did was to reckless and that he enjoyed his moments in the spotlight too much, only for Cutter to silence her and remind her of the terms of their arrangement declaring he could deal with enemies, but not her making decisions on the fly. The two reaffirmed their partnership.
Getting the final preparations ready, Pryce stood by Cutter as he enacted his plan, even setting some of the terms to Bob. Following the transfer being complete she took Eiffel to the lab to extract the information from his mind.
Strapping Eiffel down, Pryce hooked him up to another of her neural devices, this one specifically designed to transfer information form the subjects mind into hers. Meeting Eiffel in the neural sphere she demanded he help her find the information, or she would just keep symbolically breaking things until she found it, each time taking more his memories.
They are interrupted by Hera who manged to hack her way into the device and confront her abusive creator. Pryce however, mocked her for thinking she could take her and then sadistically warned not to do too much damage in here, intentionally shattering numerous other objects to take Eiffel’s memories.
Hera’s attempts to face Pryce don’t go so well, with her mocking Hera’s every attempt. Eiffel manages to temporarily disable her by sacrificing a large chunk of his memory, before convincing Hera they can’t defeat her like this, not before she finds what she wants, there is only thing they can do to ensure she never gets the secret of creating Surrogates.
Recovering Pryce confronts them again, only for it to be too late, departing Hera to assure she won’t hurt her she’s just going to “clip your wings a little”. Eiffel then reveals Hera’s rigged the machine to reboot, Pryce protests this will wipe all Eiffel’s memories, only for him to reminded her that their minds are linked, meaning it also wipe hers.
Unable to detach in time Pryce spends her last moments furiously ranting they have no idea what they have done, before suffering a total Death of Personality.
Freudian Excuse or Redeeming traits:
Pryce has even less concerns then Cutter. As horrible as it sounds, her backstory isn’t played for sympathy but rather to underline what a sociopath she is. She never even expresses any particular unhappiness at how her life started out.
Pryce is well aware all her AI’s are completely sapient (to the point they possess doubts, dreams, opinions and fears) but to her that is just a mark of her own genius, it doesn’t mean she needs to regard them as anything other than tools. She does refuse to decompose and uninstall AI’s, even troublesome ones. But it’s purely a demonstration of her egomania. She’d rather put in all the work breaking and reprograming them to prove she can, then just install a more docile and submissive (or even a non-sapient) program.
Much like Cutter everyone, be they AI or human is just a thing to Pryce, so if it does suit her she can take it apart, “fix” and then rebuild so they serve her agenda.
She does express some concern at Riemann overworking the Hephaestus crew whilst their brainwashed. But makes it clear this is solely cause she only turned off their pain receptors, they’re bodies are still as fragile as normal and it would be a loss of resources if he accidentally broke one of them. Even ending it dismissing that he has to clean up the mess if that occurs.
Pryce’s relationship with Cutter is more clear cut, whilst the two are friendly even sharing the occasional laugh and Pryce being the only one who can get away with calling Cutter by his first name, she never shown any signs that definitively display any genuine care towards Cutter. The closest is her calling him almost as intelligent as her.
Heinous Standard:
Pryce is a vicious sociopath who happily engages in human experimentation, brainwashing, torture and murder.
Whilst it’s difficult for anyone to stand out from Cutter’s shadow considering his multiple atrocities, and it’s true that Pryce does have fewer crimes under her belt than her partner. However, there are a few other factors it’s important to take into account. For starters Pryce has far less involvement and less power than Cutter, with her only appearing in person in the last six episodes and she is mostly isolated in her lab focusing on the technological side, whilst Cutter handles people.
Pryce has facilitated Cutter’s ambitions for decades. It is her who creates him the new bodies he’s used to stay alive and in control. All the worst technology at Cutter’s disposal comes from Pryce, the restrain bolts are her creation; all the neural devices are her invention, Eris is her creation etc. Several of Cutter worst acts simply wouldn’t be possible without Pryce.
And finally unlike Cutter’s detached pragmatic style, Pryce makes no secret of the fact she’s a depraved, sadistic brute. Her crimes are a lot more personal than Cutter’s, especially her constant abuse of poor Hera. She even half seriously considers eating Eiffel when the two are stuck together on the node.
Conclusion:
Again, I have my concerns whether Pryce manages to close the gap in the heinous standard through or not, but overall I’m leaning to her being a keep.
Still what do you think?
Edited by MGD107 on Oct 19th 2019 at 10:54:11 AM
Sure to the Wolf 359 candidates, with a reaffirmed yes to Cutter.
Edited by GeorgieEnkoom on Oct 19th 2019 at 6:39:48 PM
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Cutter and cut her, sadly.
Damn it, I really hate when potential CMs get undeserved mitigating qualities. Especially cute villains, which are a favorite of mine. (Then again, I am the one who suggested we cut Ellen, who fits this description, so what do I know?)
Ah well, at least I still have Kaguya Wescott, who is basically Herrscher without the undeserved redeeming qualities.
Oh, and
Pryce Walk- actually, I am not gonna make that joke.
And yeah, I would like to head @ElfenLiedFan90 explain this.
Edited by MasterN on Oct 19th 2019 at 10:15:00 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.Leaning on
for Pryce.
Found a candidate from a cheap and shitty movie
What's the work?
Doom: Annihilation
is a low-budget sci-fi action movie, based on Doom video game franchise and a reboot of 2005 Doom movie. Being a little more faithful to the games (with many references, like a chainsaw, shotgun, a BFG and demons, actually being creatures from Hell and not the result of some experiment), Doom: Annihilation follows a group of marines, as they travel on United Aerospace Corporation (UAC) base on Phobos
to their new assignment, but find the base empty, without power and full of feral zombies. As it was revealed, UAC found ancient teleporters known as "Gates", which they planned to use to quickly teleport people across the galaxy and the first test in teleportation turns out sorta success (they teleported one dude, who returned, only greatly corrupted and feral, with great hints that he got to another place in between his teleportation to a base on Phobos, which did this to him), Dr. Betruger (the head of the project) decides to teleport himself, only for strange demonic creatures to starting to emerge from the "Gates", killing nearly all people on the base. As the marines and the survivors, trying to get out of the base, they find out who sended a creatures from "Hell" to attack their base.
Who is Demon Overlord
◊?
A nameless demon overlord, who apparently is the leader of demonic forces in Hell with a strong hatred towards humanity. Predating humanity by thousands of years, demon overlord and his demons once ruling the Earth, before leaving (for some unknown reason) to a separate dimension known as "Hell", where demon overlord, after some time, planned to get back Earth and exterminate humanity. Leaving the "Gates" before disappearing, demon overlord expected humanity to find and active them, once they evolve enough to develop advanced technology. As the first test subject, whom humanity used to test teleportation, entered the "Gates", he got to "Hell", where demon overlord corrupted him, turning him in to
◊ this
◊ and making him insane, before sending him back. When Dr. Betruger himself used the "Gates", demon overlord brainwashed him, making him think that demons want to enlighten humanity and evolve them, before sending his demons to attack the base and kill everyone or turn them in to zombies. When marines arrive to the base and find survivors, they try to find out what's going on, while Dr. Betruger manipulates them in to bringing base back online, so he could reopen the "Gates". As nearly all marines and survivors die, one by one, killed by either demons or zombies, only Lt. Joan Dark and Dr. Betruger remained, with Dr. Betruger successfully opened the "Gates" and sends Joan there. There Joan finally meets demon overlord, he give her a speech (pretty cliche one and using his own ancient Sumerian language) about how pathetic humans are and orders his demons to run to the portal (which would allow them to come to Earth) and annihilate humanity.
Joan seemingly kills demon overlord, using BFG, and blows some demons, before going to the portal herself and arriving at UAC base on Earth and tries to warn them about the demons and tells them to close the "Gates", high-ranking scientist orders to restrain her and demons apparently managed to get to Earth (as the screen turns dark and many screams are heard).
Heinousness?
Actively plans to annihilate entire human race and kill everything on Earth, so he could get the planet back. I think he passes.
Mitigating Qualities?
Demons here are more like unintelligent and animalistic in nature, demon overlord the only one who is fully intelligent and can speak (making him unique among them), also he is the one who has the power over regular demons and commands them and although he once calls the his "children", it was during him ordering them to Zerg Rush Earth and he doesn't really show any particular care toward them and nothing indicates that he sees them more than a soldiers and means to conquer Earth.
Conclusion?
I will say Yes.
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Oct 19th 2019 at 9:10:57 PM
Yes to the Demon Overlord. How is the film? Any good?
I saw Joker today. Yep. Doesn't count. I also kind of love it for many reasons - I kind of identified with Arthur having been attacked by shitty teens some years ago. Seeing him make those Wall Street pigs bleed was cathartic.
But there's also a real tenderness to the film. A true humanity buried in its surface nihilism.
Also, no one's mentioned this, but the ending makes it unclear what actually happened. Most of the film may have been a delusion which he demonstrates he does often. And in a weird way that makes him quite faithful - not only a Multiple-Choice Past but a Multiple Choice Movie.
Sure to the Demon Overlord.
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)
