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
Can we stop with the joke names so much? It's distracting, kind of annoying and earnestly, in total bad taste when discussing genocidal murderers from a setting with repercussions that reach to modern day communities.
Just to make it clear? In any and all effortposts I do, I politely request this to stop.
Edited by Lightysnake on Oct 26th 2019 at 11:40:38 AM
All I have to say about that.
Delph, I don't think Lighty noticed your typo. I'm the one who focused on every part of the effortpost except the part that says this was based on true events. I'm the one who made an obvious quip in poor taste because I was not paying attention. No need to beat yourself up over a typing error.
I, on the other hand, need to read effortposts twice from now on, so I don't make this mistake again.
That's what I thought, but I get the feeling that Lighty sees them as being in bad taste in general. If I had been paying attention, I wouldn't have made a pun.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Oct 26th 2019 at 2:58:32 PM
RE: Late No to Chrysalis: I'm against anyone from G4 counting. (Aside from Cosmos who is allowed to be darker as the comics were generally aimed at an older audience). Simply put, unless someone surpasses Cosmos in heinousness, (and considering she's apparently behind EVERYTHING) they aren't going up. Simple.
Cozy Glow, Tirek and Sombra are also easy
s because they don't pass the baseline heinous standard set by Cosmos. Not only that, but two out the three are shown to have redeeming qualities and there was no inkling that Sombra was going to kill the baby. He was just using it as a bargaining tool.
Unless G5 has actual slavery shown on screen, mass genocide of kids, or destroying multiverses I don't think we'll ever get another MLP CM outside of the comics.
Here is my writeup:
X2: Wolverine's Revenge: Professor Truett Hudson or simply The Professor is a mastermind behind Weapon X project, an experiment design to create the perfect killing machine. To this end The Professor experiments on a least a dozen of people, turning them into mindless feral mutants, before he gets his hands on Victor Creed aka Sabretooth and Logan aka Wolverine. Kidnapping the two, The Professor commits a number of painful experiments on them, wiping their minds and turning them in to perfect soldiers. When Logan escapes and confronts The Professor, he informs him that he injected all Weapon X subjects with Shiva Virus, which would kill them in a few years, leading to Logan starting to search for the cure several years later.
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Oct 27th 2019 at 10:59:43 PM
I don't see the point in discussing MLP anymore right now. We've already agreed that neither Sombra nor show! Chrysalis counts, and as bad as comic! Chrysalis is (if you thought she was bad in the show, you will think of her comic version as shockingly dark), we have decided to wait and see if the season 10 issues bring her and her two allies back via freeing them from stone for a possible redemption arc or something. I've already reserved discussion on the discussion dates. The season 10 issues don't come out until April 2020, so depending on whether on how long the issues continue to run for, it could take well over a year for us to be able to discuss her. I plan to wait until at least next October. That gives them 6 months to do something with her in them. I will give an update on how the issues have gone at that time. Now, can we please move on?
jjjCosmos' stuff in the Comics has absolutely no bearing on the MLP show anyway. G4's show and comics are separate continuities and irrelevant to each other. So it doesn't matter what Cosmos does in the comics as it will never affect the show no matter what. Even if the character was in the show(pretty sure they aren't), it wouldn't matter if they didn't do the same exact deeds as is.
So there's no point in bringing it up since that's really not how the show nor comics work, nor this trope. The continuities must be the same for the heinous standard to matter. Anyway, as noted, the comic stuff will be discussed if there's even anything to discuss once it's over.
Shadow?So, I just sent a PM to Fried on a character I'm having doubts on them being an MB and actually leaning forward to a CM as they have no redeeming qualities, so I'm waiting to hear back on that and I might have something new-ish for you guys.
Yes to Vlad and Brai.
Edited by Klavice on Oct 27th 2019 at 1:08:11 AM
Going to echo Lightysnake on the joke names. It's possible people might misread them and incorrectly do the tallies. They also can easily be in bad taste and serve no major purpose other than being silly. I mean, I get the site is light and breezy too, but we should never be confusing either on our votes. Clear, Concise, Witty, basically.
...Incidentally, I'm recently aware I've spelled Crysalis wrong. I'm used to the similar name Crystalis, the name of an old adventure game. Welp.
Shadow?

Yes to Brai. Any of the pics could work...now, I've got one...
What's the work?
The Nightingale is a brutal recent film directed by Jennifer Kent, of The Babadook fame. Starring Aisling Franciosi as Clare Carroll in 1825, Tasmania...during the Black War, when the British committed horrible atrocities to force the Aboriginal tribes from their home...many people there were also indentured servants, which is Clare. Clare is married to a loving man named Aidan with an infant child, but her life, naturally, sucks there....and then things go horribly, horribly wrong, leading Clare to revenge....the commanding officer? The monstrous Lieutenant Hawkins.
Who is Hawkins?
a handsome young man who runs a derelict outpost with his Sergeant Ruse, Hawkins has enacted brutal crimes against the local tribes, later commenting on the 'blacks he's cleared'...but more than that? Hawkins is a thuggish sadist who chafes under his low status. When an officer investigates to see if he's fit for captaincy, Clare requests for him to put in a letter to grant her freedom as she's worked off her debt...a letter Hawkins should have sent, but refuses to constantly....enraged at her 'presumption,' Hawkins attacks her, shoves her over a table and rapes her, something that he indicates later is not the first time. Clare doesn't tell Aidan, but Aidan, enraged that Hawkins constantly defers Clare's freedom, starts a fight with Hawkins...Hawkins' officer sees it and decides Hawkins isn't fit for captaincy...to cut him off, Hawkins decides to travel through the dangerous wilderness to the town of Launceston to quickly secure the garrison and become a captain...
but before he goes, he pays Clare a visit with Ruse and their private, Jago...Hawkins beats down Aidan and mocks him over all the times he's had sex with Clare before raping her in front of her husband, and then shoots Aidan through the throat before allowing Ruse to rape her...when Clare's infant screams and cries through it, Hawkins demands Jago silence it until in a moment of panicked stress, Jago smacks the baby's skull against the stones. Hawkins orders Jago to rape Clare as well. Disbelieved by the garrison, Clare goes for a personal revenge, lying to an aborigine tracker named 'Billy' (real name Mangala "The Blackbird), to lead her to them while Hawkins takes a group of soldiers and convicts along, including a little boy named Eddie he takes a shine to.
Along the way, Ruse comes across a native woman named Lowanna to use as a sex slave. Initially annoyed at the burden, Hawkins agrees, raping Lowanna and allowing Ruse to do the same...when her people show up? Hawkins shoots Lowanna in the back and flees, leaving an injured Jago to die (he's found and killed by Clare). Clare and billy slowly bond on the trip while Hawkins' aborigine guide, Charlie, disgusted by Hawkins' brutality, leads him to a mountain to die, prompting Ruse to shoot Charlie dead. Hawkins is incensed and threatens Ruse with execution, letting Eddie choose if he lives or dies. Hawkins manages to escape the mountain with them, and tries to force Eddie to shoot Billy. When Eddie can't, a disgusted Hawkins tells him he's nothing and leaves him in the woods, mocking him that he'll tell the garrison at Launceston Eddie fled his sentence and he'll get another ten years. When Eddie keeps begging not to be left, Hawkins spins around and shoots him dead, bemoaning "the noise of him!"
He makes it to Launceston and secures a promotion, denying his crimes against Clare, and mocking her for everything with no remorse. With no recourse and surrounded by soldiers, she can't touch him or Ruse....Billy, however, disgusted and enraged, breaks form his 'guide' job and dons his people's war paint (he's now the last of his tribe), and attacks a brothel when Hawkins is there with Ruse....he finds Hawkins and flings a spear into his heart, killing him almost instantly while he then fights Ruse, who mortally wounds him before Billy finishes him...the film ends with Billy declaring himself free as Clare, known as the nightingale for her singing, sings the dying Billy a Gaelic funeral song.
Heinousness?
I'm not gonna sugarcoat it...this movie is dark. The atrocities of the British are not glossed over, not even a little. But despite this? Hawkins is the worst. He's a willing participant to ethnic cleansing and boasts of it, and he's also a serial rapist and murderer who shoots a little boy just for begging him not to be left behind. Hawkins is borderline satanic at times here and seen accordingly, not just a cog in the machine. Fucking pass.
Mitigating Qualities?
Once again? No, nothing. Hawkins is a monster who sees himself as having license to do whatever he wants. Any flashes of decency are smothered...rage at Ruse for murdering their guide Charlie? Because Charlie was the only one who knew the way off the mountain. His fondness for Eddie? When Eddie isn't a killer, Hawkins mocks him coldly, says Eddie is nothing and will never be anything, and then murders him without a twinge of regret. While he doesn't capture Lowanna himself, he decides to rape her himself and leave her to Ruse...with Clare's baby? He dosn't order it killed, but he pressures Jago into it with no remorse and clearly indicates he was going to do it himself if the child wouldn't stop crying. Jago and Ruse are scum, but Jago is more pathetic and pressured, more a man lacking a spine who yields to pressure of monsters to become one himself. Ruse is awful, but Hawkins is far worse.
Conclusion?
Yes, easy yes, one of the most sickening bastards I've seen in a while.
Edited by Lightysnake on Oct 26th 2019 at 11:33:23 AM