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
Having played Bloodlines several times, Vandal is a
. His hobby as a Serial Killer of women and vagrants is unfortunately Offscreen Villainy, he's more of a Hate Sink really.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on Dec 22nd 2019 at 1:27:07 PM
Ramson,
Vandal
What is the work?
The Greatest Magicmasters Retirement Plan is a light novel where magic-wielding Fiends suddenly appeared and wiped out most of human civilization, forcing the remaining countries to train Military Mages to fight back and reclaim territory. The strongest mage, Alus, is on extended leave and poses as a student at the Second Magical Institute while secretly conducting research into new spells, all in the hopes that he'll find an opportunity for retirement. In Volume 2, he's eventually given a mission to kill a dangerous researcher, who happens to be connected to one of his new friends. Volume 3 is the conclusion of that arc and was published by J-Novel Club over a month ago, so this candidate should be fair game.
Who is Godma Barhong
Godma is the lead researcher for the Element Factor Separation Project, a government research project with the goal of copying the ability to use light magic and transplanting that ability into test subjects. The process involves overwriting the subjects' mana information, which causes their bodies to experience great pain and often death as a rejection effect. He manages to transfer Alice's light elemental factor to Melissa with comparatively minimal side effects compared to other attempts, but doesn't know how to reproduce that result. Eventually, the government discovers a dead test subject and shuts down the project, forcing Godma to become a fugitive in order to complete his research.
What does he do?
At some point, Godma comes into contact with a mysterious backer called Enouve, who provides him with funds and kidnapped children to experiment on. Since he can't figure out how to prevent the rejection effect, he instead shuts down his test subjects' nervous systems and turn them into mindless combat puppets so that they'll ignore the pain and follow his every command. He then sends his test subjects out to attack soldiers, civilians, and the Second Institute in order to gauge their capabilities.
As for Melissa, Godma put a device in her so that he can choose whether she's sentient or not and preys on her emotional dependency issues to make her serve him. When she objects to him killing a test subject who is unable to fight, he slaps her and emotionally abuses her for being "ungrateful." He then brings up a monitor of Alice attending the military school and pretends not to notice Melissa watching the screen, all to manipulate her into finding Alice and warning her. When the two meet, Godma takes control of Melissa and has her kidnap Alice while he sacrifices several of his test subjects to use Senas Requiem, a mass destruction spell, on the school as a distraction. The spell is blocked by Principal Nexophia, but Melissa gets away and takes Alice to Godma's hideout. Godma proceeds to take blood samples from Alice in order to refine his research.
When Alus and his friends show up to rescue Alice, they find that Godma use the lifeforce of a test subject to power an illusion to obscure his hideout's entrance. Godma reveals that he has 200 test subjects remaining and orders them to kill the heroes. When that fails, he uses a serum to transform himself into a Fiend and orders Melissa to kill Alice and her friends. Alice snaps Melissa out of Godma's control, but the scientist then casts Senas Requiem using Melissa's lifeforce, resulting in her committing suicide to prevent the spell. After his defeat, Godma reverts to human form and then attempts to goad Alice into killing him. Despite his mockery of Melissa and the other test subjects, Alice doesn't bite.
Principal Nexophia discovers that Godma had one more test subject remaining, whose sole purpose is to sneak his research data to his backer in the hopes that his horrific research lives on. All his test subjects are Mercy Killed by the military and all his research data is destroyed, putting an end to his ambitions. Despite being in military custody, Godma is killed by an assassin associated with his backers.
Mitigating factors?
Godma doesn't care about helping humanity win the war against the Fiends and only conducted his research out of curiosity and a need to prove his intelligence. He has no qualms about killing humanity's defenders if they get in the way of his experiments and doesn't care about his backer is or what their purpose is.When he tries to get Alice to take revenge on him, he's clearly not doing so out of atonement, since he continues to mock all the lives he ruined. Considering that he had a test subject try to escape with his data, him asking to be killed comes off more as Pragmatic Villainy to prevent the military from interrogating him on the location of his data.
Heinousness?
Pretty bad for the first human antagonist. He destroyed the minds and bodies of over 200 people, sacrifices several of them in an attempt to destroy a school, and abuses Melissa physically and emotionally. So far, his only competition is Enouve and the Fiends, but the former is still shrouded in mystery while the latter are portrayed as feral beasts. Volume 4 won't be translated until February 2020, so I have no idea if there's going to be another villain to rival him in heinousness.
Verdict?
He looks like he could qualify as a classic Mad Scientist CM.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Godma.
Anyone here familiar with Anatolia Story? I am thinking of doing an EP on Queen Nakia, the Big Bad. She has a sympathetic backstory (being forced to marry the old king who ruined her homeland by her neglectful father) but I would say it is rather disproportionate to all the people who died because of her; The Heroine Yuri certainly agrees, outright saying so at one point. She sets the heinousness standard and has caused several deaths and sparked wars, so passes there. She also wants to make her son Juda the king, but only so she can turn him into a Puppet King. She does express despair when he and The Dragon Urhi turn on her, but this could just be frustration at having lost valuable pawns.
Point is, it has been a while, and the manga is like 90 or so chapters, so I do not remember all that well, and am not sure I want to reread it all again. I will if there is no other way, but I first want to see if anyone familiar with the series has anything to say, since I do not want to waste time EP-ing a non-keeper.
Edited by MasterN on Dec 22nd 2019 at 10:21:31 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.I'll get to some HB writeups when I'm done that and some Mignola ones. Here's the others on my list for now:
- Generation X: Dr. Russell Tresh is a cheerfully maladjusted sociopath and Mad Scientist who introduces himself attempting to open up the brain of a conscious and struggling mutant for his brain cells. Intending to use these mutant brain cells to gain power over both the real world and the dream dimension, Tresh uses his inventions at first merely to subliminally influence people to buy products before using them to mind-control his boss into jumping to his death for "betraying" him. Seeking revenge over his old business partner Emma Frost, Tresh sinks to his absolute lowest when he, to force the hand of her student Angelo/Skin into helping him, threatens to mentally torture Skin and his girlfriend for hours every night and promising to literally Mind Rape his kid sister. When Skin caves, Tresh decides to reward his loyalty by drilling into his brain while he's still awake, promising his friend Jubilee is next on his table.
- The Last Days of New Paris: Dr. Josef Mengele is, as ever, a sadistic mad scientist who specializes on experiments on human lives. When sapient surrealist artworks start appearing all over Paris to fight the Nazis, Mengele turns to experimenting on them in sadistic and horrifying ways, breaking them apart and slaughtering them in gruesome tests that involve peppering them with bullets and dissecting them while they're alive. Mengele even allies with the treacherous priest Robert Alesch to sacrifice the lives of countless manifs to Hell, all in preparation for the creation of a living Hitler-manif that will rewrite the world to suit the Nazis' advantage.
- Crimson King: Randall Flagg himself is the POV character of this song, spreading the message of his dark master the Crimson King and gathering all those with lost souls to his dark service. Thriving wherever there is war, sin and evil, Flagg gleefully shows himself bereft of anything but a self-indulgent wickedness, relishing in his many evil titles and awaiting the day he ensures the collapse of the Tower and basks in the thrill of "a thousand worlds dying at once"—whereupon Flagg seeks power beyond the downfall of existence.
Edited by Scraggle on Dec 22nd 2019 at 12:39:46 PM
to Godma
to Vandal
Also No one answered my question so I’ll ask again, how many other CSI candidates did we previously discussed after Trent? I remember that Sircray proposed Wesley Habek, miraculous proposed Jenny Carrol, and I just proposed Tom Cooley but did we discuss any other CSI candidates?
Edited by G-Editor on Dec 23rd 2019 at 12:08:16 AM
My sandbox of EPs and other stuff
No, though I brought Edwin Chambers as a potential candidate but never EP it. Don't know, while I watch the show, I don't know how to handle the standards of a TV Show compared to animes and video games, especially since these shows usually run longer. My biggest reason for thinking him as a qualifier is that he targets little girls that he kidnaps in his pageants and been doing it for a number of years.
@TheImmortalAngelNewton: you can EP Edwin Chambers if you really think he qualifies. From what I heard and seen raping children is an extremely rare crime in CSI so Edwin might stand out and doing an EP on him and getting him approved would be pretty easy
Edited by G-Editor on Dec 23rd 2019 at 12:13:43 AM
My sandbox of EPs and other stuff
Honestly the issue I have is that Edwin has two victims on-screen, a girl he kidnaps in the episode and the older sister of one of the contestants who's now a teenager. We definitely know he had more victims thanks to his wife's testimony and crime scene, but no exact number was given although we do have a good idea how long his crimes has been happening considering the sister that was a victim of his is now a teenager. Do you think that's enough to qualify?

Ramson the throat ripper.
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.