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
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
We should also cut the quote as well.
Man, I hate the Cry for the Devil trope (when badly done, which it usually is). It’s a Pet-Peeve Trope for a reason.
Well,
to Junji!Grimhilde.
Edited by MasterN on Mar 11th 2020 at 8:13:25 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.This is one from a story I revisited recently in light of an upcoming movie. For context Tim Sonski is a Creepypasta writer, best known for his "The Rake Vs Dogman series. This story is something of a successor, being a crossover between a well known Creepypasta monster and a well known slasher series.
"Candyman vs Slenderman
" is a story that is fairly simple despite its length focusing on a young man named Eric, whose friend Kevin is murdered by the Candyman after a discussion of urban legends occurs between them. Afterwards Eric is hounded by a detective who inexplicably suspects Eric (despite the nigh unexplainable circumstances of Kevin's death), as well as the Slenderman, who turns out to be a figure from Eric's past.
Now, it's obvious no incarnation of the Candyman is ever going to be a CM. So that leaves us with his opponent.
Who is the Slenderman ? What does he do ?
The story opens with the Candyman's narration of how his "congregation" has forgotten him, bringing Slenderman up as a false god and usurper, but nothing will stop the Candyman's return so that people will revere him once more. As we see later Slenderman has a hobby of taking the souls of his victims into this dark place, kind of a purgatory that he rules over.
Anyways, this incarnation is brought up at the beginning, Slendedman's influence is discussed through a series of news reports and a conversation between Eric and Kevin regarding how people have killed or tried to for Slenderman; bringing up the real life stabbing from 2014 (poor taste in my opinion, but they don't talk about it too much). Eric is helping his friend Kevin move into a new place, where Kevin announces he an his girlfriend Krissy are having a baby. This soon gets sidetracked by a discussion of a recent death of one of their friends, who was obsessed with Urban Legends, which turns into a discussion of Slenderman's possible existence, and a muggled down version the events of the first three Candyman movies. The obvious commentary being how people kill in the name of Urban Legend figures. On his way to Krissy's, Kevin jokingly invokes Candyman while driving, which results in him getting slaughtered.
At Kevin's buriel, Eric thinks he sees Slenderman watching him and talks a walk around the graveyard, spotting the grave of a girl named Chelsey. Eric flashes back to when he was a kid, when he and Kevin first met. Eventually Eric ends up in a hide and seek game where he encounters Slenderman but manages to escape his clutches. However despite Eric managing to escape, Slenderman compensates by stealing a random little girl named Chelsey. The police ask young Eric is he saw anything/anyone suspicious, but they didn't believe him when he says he saw a "Man who looked like Jack Skellington." Since then Eric has put the encounter behind him.
Back in the present, Eric finds himself not only being followed by the Slenderman, but one Detective Trembly, who suspects Eric had something to do with Kevin's death. For the bulk of the story, Eric is on the run from Slenderman and stops by a gas station to buy some smokes, and spots a series of missing posters of children who disappeared in the area, and a children's drawing of Slenderman captioned "The Quiet Man Plays Hide and Seek". Eric's car is pulled over by a cop who asks why he's in such a rush, and said cop is immediately ripped apart by the Slenderman. Eric flees back to the house Kevin was going to move too and as Slenderman advances on the house, he decides to take a gamble and summon the Candyman.
Candyman appears just as Slenderman enters the room, and declares he will take both Eric and the usurper. The inevitable fight ensues throughout the house, with both entities inflicting mutilating injuries on eachother and wrecking the house, and injuring Eric as he gets caught in their crossfire. Trembly enters the scene and attempts to arrest Eric for killing Kevin and the earlier officer, only for the Slenderman to briefly stop the fight and slaughter Trembly. In the commotion the stove breaks and gas fills the room, before Eric lights a fire and the house going up in flames, destroying the entities in a Heroic Suicide...
Or so he thinks, before Eric wakes up in the Slenderman's dark world, surrounded by the zombie like children he claimed. Slenderman places him in front of a mirror, and it's revealed he and Candyman made a temporary truce, to claim both claim Eric and Krissy. Slenderman forces Eric to watch as a suicidal Krissy summons Candyman from her mirror and is subsequently butchered. After Candyman boasts that the time is coming when he will reign again, Slenderman drags a screaming Eric into the darkness.
Redeeming Qualities or Freudian Excuse ?
Unlike most CM versions of the Slenderman, this one doesn't talk or even leave messages. He's more akin to the film version of the Operator, letting his actions speak for themselves. Even then this Slenderman isn't big on characterization. Eric speculates the reason he is after him is because Eric was someone who got away, and that Slenderman is killing others who get in his way because Eric is his "property" - a staple of the Slenderman Mythos.
The most actual characterization Slenderman gets in this story is he has a knack for cruelty as seen in the end, as seen in truce with the Candyman and them both forcing Eric to watch as his pregnant friend is killed. But that's about it, and nothing to give us a look into his thought process. Other than that he acts like a typical rampaging monster.
Heinous Standard
Besides the Candyman's obvious mitigating qualites, Slenderman still manages out out-heinous him in this story. Candyman is personable and brutal yes, and he mentions that he takes the souls of his victims even if we do not see this, but he only kills three people in this story (one of them in a teamup with Slenderman). Other than that the Candyman relies on his canon crimes to give him some sort of reputation (the events of the first three movies are discussed).
Slenderman has a higher onscreen and/or implicit bodycount than Candyman, as showing the numerous children he has taken into his dark world, where they exist in a near zombified state for him to rule over, and a reputation of getting people to kill for him. His "team up" kill with the Candyman on a pregnant woman, and forcing her friend to watch from behind a mirror, is just plainly sadistic on their part.
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."
Slenderman. I'm going to assume that 5 yays over nays rule works here, too. I'm pretty sure The Queen has about double digit yays with zero nays, so I'll just do the thing:
- Junji Ito's Snow White: The Queen is far more vile and sadistic then her literary counterpart. After being told she is only the second fairest in the land by her magic mirror, and catching her husband courting her, The Queen has Snow White tossed into the dungeon and eventually murdered. When Snow White is revived by the spirits of seven dwarves and the magic mirror continues to praise her beauty, The Queen personally kills Snow White dozens of times, even going as far as to mutilate her face in an attempt to destroy her beauty. After all this fails, The Queen has Snow White set aflame, laughing sadistically as she watches her burn.
![]()
Yeah, the 5 more yes than no still apllies. Please add to the Drafts.
Sure to Slendy.
Edited by ACW on Mar 11th 2020 at 1:22:37 PM
Sure to Matthew and the Queen, but Von Talon... I dunno, the yodel torture and bathtime silliness push him a little too close towards being more of an evil nazi parody than a proper evil nazi portrayal. But if he's eating pidgeons and displaying them as trophies with that being played for full horror...
Eh. I think I'll just abstain because I'm having a hard time voting either way.
'Yes' to the Queen, Slenderman and yeah, Von Talon as surprising as it is. It's been a long while since I've seen the film but I definitely recall him being played seriously enough—the opening scene and his display of stuffed pigeon corpses especially shocked my little kid eyes—yodeling notwithstanding, but considering his status as an animated kids' film villain, I can let such humor slide. The likes of BTAS!Joker ran around with inflatable duck floats and got his ass kicked by Harley for laughs, such often comes with the territory of being villains in works 'made' for kids, and Von Talon sounds like no exception.
And yeah, cut the Maze fellow, it's coincidental that he sounds exactly like another villain I myself almost proposed—absolutely vile Evil Overlord who had nothing remotely tragic or redeeming about him, but if you got 100% completion of the game, it opened up a whole new level that revealed said Evil Overlord had a horrible backstory that explained everything he did.
Now then, here's some of my pending write-ups to wittle down that list real quick...
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): Claude Vinim, known to everyone as "Dr. Venom," is the original Mad Scientist for Cobra, who came into the organization after burning a college dean alive for attempting to expose Venom's murder of his own father. Feveloping the Brainwave Scanner for Cobra, Venom deliberately designs the machine to cause maximum amount of pain to its victims, using it to Mind Rape anyone unfortunate enough to cross Cobra. After making an Arch-Enemy out of Snake Eyes by using the Brainwave Scanner on him, Venom brutally beats the defenseless G.I. Joe, betrays and tries to kill him when they are forced to team up, and shoots one of Snake Eyes's partners, Kwinn, in the back when the man showed Venom mercy. Though seemingly killed after a failed attempt to poison the United States' money supply and kill millions, Venom returns, having copied his brain into a computer program, and begins bodyjacking several people, using them in his mad experiments on innocents to kill or subjugate every member of G.I. Joe and Cobra alike. Though lacking in appearances of other leadership of Cobra, Venom's despicable crimes and scoffing of love and caring relationships marks him as one of the worst criminals to ever grace Cobra's ranks.
- Joker: Killer Smile, by Jeff Lemire, et al: The Joker, defined by his nihilistic viewpoints and insane love of art that manifests as murder, serves as the corrupting force that afflicts Dr. Benjamin Arnell throughout the comic. Locked in Arkham for at least two counts of mass murder—gassing an entire street of innocent men, women and children, and drowning a subway full of people before beating the only survivor to death—Joker makes Arnell his personal project, scheming to corrupt and drive the man insane over the course of several years. When Arnell's family leaves him due to Joker's influence over the doctor, Joker pushes Arnell over the edge and orchestrates him into killing several innocent people before freeing the Joker. During his escape from Arkham, Joker kick-starts a prison riot, leading to an utter massacre of the security staff, before sending Arnell to kill his wife and son, laughing afterwards at how he's broken Arnell into murdering his once-beloved family.
- Shadow of Fear (2004): William J. Ashbury Jr. is a seemingly kind, friendly lawyer who in truth targets men who have committed a crime, promising to help them get away with said crime before blackmailing them into becoming his personal puppets. Once he has the men under his control, Ashbury forces them to repeat their 'sin' over and over again for years to come, from lying on their taxes to cheating on their wives, driving the men to self-loathing and near insanity from years of anxiety and horror at what Ashbury makes them do. Though claiming to want to "help" his victims, Ashbury cheerfully reveals in private that he sees them all as nothing but a "collection" for him to sadistically toy with and hurt. Ashbury also targets the women in his victims' lives, seducing and coming onto their wives and daughters, and threatening to mentally and emotionally destroy the women should any of his victims speak out. Upon gaining the newest addition to his collection, Harrison French, Ashbury plans to force him to kill his own brother-in-law Chris, bragging that he'll have French repeat his "sin" of murder over and over as long as Ashbury likes, before trying to kill Harrison and Chris when they resist his control.
![]()
Candyman was an artist who fell in love with and started a relationship with a white woman in the 19th century. After the townsfolk found out they had Him beaten, mutilated and covered in honey to be killed by bees.....
Dude then came back as a Vengeful Ghost and has been once since....
So uh yeah....
Edited by miraculous on Mar 11th 2020 at 12:01:06 PM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Their will be a new dracula film
.
Seems the resounding successes of The invisible man has meant that universal is going to tackle more classics.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Good to see Universal's bouncing back from the failure of the Dark Universe.
Edited by ImperialMajestyXO on Mar 11th 2020 at 12:17:59 PM
Funningly enough of the various dracula films. I think theirs only one left that I've heard off that would probably still have a dracula cm. From now on comics and literature are where well get cm versions of him from.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."I actually really want the Dark Universe to work out! I feel it can be really great!
Speaking of media redeeming itself and I can't believe I didn't mention this sooner, anyone else hyped for the animated adaptation of Uzumaki after the absolute travesty that was The Junji Ito Collection or whatever the stupid thing was called?
Edited by Spooky2Cute on Mar 11th 2020 at 12:48:53 PM
I completely blanked on how I came across his work, I think it was Super Eyepatch Wolf's video on his stuff I came across while browsing his videos.
I hate that freaking next page method. I didn't think it'd be possible to create tension in a non-motion media, but Junji wouldn't be where is today if he wasn't unique.
Edited by Spooky2Cute on Mar 11th 2020 at 12:57:39 PM

Was about ready to vote down Von Talon from memory of how goofy some of his scenes were from recollection—I'm not putting any stock whatsoever into yodel torture being "heinous"—but that "gallery full of stuffed dead pigeons" is a grisly enough tidbit I think I'm okay saying yes to him. He's literally as bad as he can be for a kid-friendly interpretation of WWII.
Yes to the Queen, too.