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
to Mengele
Most of the effort post for Gargoyle plagiarizes the Pure Evil Proposal on Villains Wiki
.
@ Fan727 Not cool dude. I understand that you want to have a candidate voted up, but try at least to be patient. Complete Monster isn't a trophy or anything.
Edited by GeorgieEnkoom on Oct 23rd 2019 at 11:42:34 AM
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)@ Kylotrope Ironically, he went up on Villains Wikia.
Edited by GeorgieEnkoom on Oct 23rd 2019 at 12:46:39 PM
J’m’arrête pas tant qu’j’vois pas des lignes sur les moniteurs (Not stoppin 'til I see Flatlines)We look very, very lowly upon plagiarism, Fan. It's in the header. Don't do this again.
Anyway, I have a candidate or two that, with the story having closed recently, I've been meaning to get to.
What's the setting?
We're coming back to The Kindness of Devils for this one. I've proposed from this series before—earnestly, there's a few (like the Pijavica and Hargrove) I can see us cutting—but the sixth and newest main entry, Reign in Hell, has indisputably some folks to talk about.
Reign in Hell is a prequel to the main series, starring instead Hardestadt's father, the Devil himself—Lucifer, who here is a charismatic Guile Hero who, alongside the angels known as the Seven Sins and several of his turncoat angels, are banished to Hell, populated already with native demons. Fresh from the fall, Lucifer and his motley crew take in with the demon Nephera Vallikan who represents someone sympathetic to the Fallen's plight in a world rife (perhaps rightfully) with Fantastic Racism against angelkind. From there, Lucifer and the others strive to gain acceptance and power within Hell, and uncover in the process the dark plots of Hell's current ruler, the High King Azazel Baal.
Who is King Azazel? What has he done?
Ruler of House Baal, the most powerful nobility within Hell with a motto of "the best is always broken," Azazel is the High King of Hell who gained his power through deception, killing the demon legend Andromalia in a gambit and imprisoning his own mother Lilith within Sheol. Azazel, through his terrifying ability in the Grand Dance (Hell's local term for political scheming) becomes a Villain with Good Publicity with a legion of loyal sons and an army capable of ripping apart worlds. Azazel ensures he's seen as a hero by Hell while harboring darker secrets.
See, Azazel has some secrets that would land him right in Hell's hot water... namely, consent is literally sacred in Hell, a world that otherwise promotes sexual freedom. Azazel spits on that notion and invents the Court of the Broken, a litany of countless alien beings—enough to fill entire worlds—have their minds destroyed, their families and worlds often butchered, and left to serve as Azazel's broken sex slaves. Azazel introduces himself having House Odasiov slaughtered from within and its king executed by trial solely to fulfill a centuries-old gambit to steal Odasiov's children for the Court, and gleefully breaks a one-sided promise he made with the Fay courts to provide him with stock, flaunting that in their faces. When Lucifer comes to parley with Azazel, Azazel offers him a peek at the Court and a gallery of glassy-eyed slaves—when Lucifer rejects it in horror, Azazel kills all the slaves at once. "I cannot abide inadequate stock."
Azazel is also a monstrously abusive parent. His eldest son, Dasrian, covered the second-oldest, Kasarian, during a failure in a training mission—Azazel leads him off and destroys his mind, inducting Dasrian to serve his incestuous pleasure in the Court of the Broken and forcing Kasarian to bear witness to it, reminding Kasarian that he's only a tool. His daughter, Vinea, is a terrified puppet in Hell's court made solely to serve as an extra mouthpiece for her father. Azazel hangs the threat of the Court over her head, having destroyed the mind of her mother Sevara and forcing Vinea to look upon her shattered form to terrify Vinea into compliance. All the others are tools to him, ones he openly threatens and beats. When one of his sons, Orias, stops him from finally murdering Vinea in a moment of fury (after Vinea escapes, with Nephera's help) Azazel coolly rips his own son's head off and uses it to cow the others.
Oh, and said Court of the Broken (that's popping up a lot in here)? Azazel's children doesn't stop at his servants in the House of Baal. A large portion of his army consists of broken, mindless dolls he bred out of the Court's victims.
In-between his political wrangling with Lucifer and the others, in which Azazel takes glee in putting pressure and setting up sadistic gambits for Lucifer and his allies, Azazel allows for grotesque experiments on countless angels and demons at the hands of his chief scientist Zhavarel, while casually having entire worlds and planes of existence slaughtered to the absolute last for reasons by his chief warmonger Morviak, as simple as establishing resorts upon the ashes, resulting in billions of lives cleared away for Azazel's convenience. Azazel gleefully employs Morviak's bloodthirsty might to commit wider and wider massacres as the story goes on, with cheerful reminders that there need be no survivors. The House of Vepar Azazel sees massacred by his pet mind rapist, Andras Eligor, and its ten-year-old ruler kept in an eternal nightmare for ages.
Azazel is unsatisfied with ruling Hell as he is, and throughout the story plots in secret with a strange force called Wormwood, a "flaw" in the Teraverse left after God vanished. Azazel experiments on it with angels and demons alike, using it to corrupt and destroys the minds of Lucifer's allies while taunting him. With Wormwood's corruptive, mind-destroying properties, Azazel intends to scourge Heaven and use Wormwood to shatter the minds of any angel who resists him, before extending Wormwood worth to break the minds of all who live to rule over existence as his shattered harem.
Azazel becomes increasingly aggressive as the story goes on, unleashing his forces on Hell in vaster and vaster numbers—having entire Houses massacred and ravaged as a matter of course and attempting to annihilate one of the largest of them, Sitri—with entire populated villages caught up in the red waves of slaughter. Azazel kills all the dissenting Kings of Hell and eventually fuses himself with Wormwood, plunges Hell into all-out war, and, once the tide turns against him, attempts to destroy all of Hell to spite Lucifer, leaving him to rule over "ash and broken dreams!" After a pitched final fight, Lucifer takes the bastard and roasts him alive from the inside-out with divine fire, in a public execution all of Hell sees after his reputation is destroyed and his crimes all exposed.
Any mitigating qualities?
Nope. Not a single damn one. He's never loved a person in his life, he's never indicated to consider anyone beyond a tool, and he's never given a whiff of any altruism. Atrocity and torture seem to come to him as naturally as eating bread.
As for the standard, even with as bloated as it's gotten? Saving maybe Nyarlathotep? Azazel's the worst in-series right now bar absolutely nobody.
Conclusion?
Easy, easy, easy keeper. I have another slightly trickier one after.
Thoughts?
Azazel. This guy and Lucifer have the best Awesome McCoolname within mainstream demonology.
Yes. I think it needs to be said because Watchmen is literally Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain town, while the following comics... aren't.
Edited by Keshali on Oct 23rd 2019 at 4:17:15 AM
