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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:

     Previous Post 
Complete Monster Cleanup Thread

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. "[tup] 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

Nohbody "In distress", my ass. from Somewhere in Dixie Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
"In distress", my ass.
#20976: Jan 15th 2014 at 9:00:27 AM

^^^ Under Siege: Yeah, neither film really strikes me as having particularly CM-worthy villains. The first one's bad guys are just mercenaries carrying out a contract for some foreign power IIRC. The second one's Big Bad might possibly qualify, but I've mostly succeeded in trying to purge that particular turd from my memory. tongue The henchmen are, again, hired help, and none are particularly heinous in their behavior.

Robocop: Boddicker was discussed, and the hooker dismissal was discounted as not being a Pet the Dog moment. His sociopathy in other scenes makes it pretty clear that if they hadn't left he'd have killed them as well just because they were in the way, without feeling any particular remorse about "collateral damage".

HP examples no comment, as I don't follow the franchise.

edited 15th Jan '14 9:00:45 AM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump
Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#20977: Jan 15th 2014 at 9:02:50 AM

Cut them and direct them to the normal HP monsters. Cut the Under Siege exampls and modify the Dick Jones entry to fix Boddicker. And fucking cut the Kitchen Nightmares entry

edited 15th Jan '14 9:03:29 AM by Lightysnake

Silverblade2 Since: Jan, 2013
#20978: Jan 15th 2014 at 9:14:50 AM

Somebody asked me to come back to discuss about Thorgal's monsters.

From Sherlock:

  • Charles Augustus Magnussen is not quite as evil as Moriarty is... but he's far more loathsome. He's a Corrupt Corporate Executive with enough money to pay for pretty-much whatever he wants. He has no need to blackmail people. But he does it anyway, because he likes the sensation of "owning" people (a concept he demonstrates by invading people's personal space in slightly-rapey ways).

Zero Context Example fest from V. C. Andrews

  • Complete Monster: Malcolm Foxworth, John Amos, and Olivia Foxworth - though we later learn the motive for her madness (the Dollanganger series), Philip Cutler and Emily Booth (the Cutler series), Dr Foreman (the Broken Wings series), Miss Harper (the Early Spring series), Victoria Hudson (the Hudson series), and Jillian and Tony Tatterton (Casteel series).

edited 15th Jan '14 10:54:20 AM by Silverblade2

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#20979: Jan 15th 2014 at 9:39:07 AM

Yes, so about the entry you cut: There WERE three monsters listed; any of them count?
As for Kitchen Nightmares, REALLY? Now, if this were a Jerkass cleanup thread, I'd nominate Gordon Ramsay, but...

Silverblade2 Since: Jan, 2013
#20980: Jan 15th 2014 at 10:11:47 AM

The cut entry in Thorgal:

"Kriss of Valnor would be one of these if it wasn't for her Heroic Sacrifice to save Thorgal, his family, and her son."

This is already false. In her very first appearance, Kriss has a genuine friendschip with her menthor. Beside this she was already a major Jerkass Woobie , got gang raped by a bunch of robbers and assisted to the death of her sole friend. In the series, she commits numerous crimes to get money but never does things For the Evulz . That intro needs to be rewritten.

"It involves three Complete Monsters - her abusive step-father, who made her his slave and started renting her out to work for a beer; his nephew, who, when Kriss started killing people in the village, murdered his own father, assaulted Kriss, raped her, and planned to kill her and blame his old man's death on her"

The abusive step-father and the nephew barely appear in the story. They are bastard but do nothing more than this. They however don't show redeeming qualities.

"the spoiled daughter of an aristocrat that was kidnapping beautiful girls, forcing them to be her dolls, and subjecting them to deadly abuse, did so with Sigwald's daughter and offered to free her if he will perform one of his juggling tricks with a bowl of incadescent coal, only to knock him down and thrust his face into the coal, almost burning him to death."

I agree with this one.

edited 15th Jan '14 10:34:32 AM by Silverblade2

Eagal Since: Apr, 2012
#20981: Jan 15th 2014 at 10:36:40 AM

From Runaways YMMV page.

  • Complete Monster: Victor Stein is probably the worst of the Pride. He abuses Chase for very minimal offenses and was even implied to have abused his wife. This got so bad, that Chase was forced to convince himself that he deserved every bit of abuse he received.
    • Warden from the first crossover with Young Avengers - it's saying someting that forcing Karolina to look at Xavin's seemingly dead corpse and taking sadistic pleasure from it was the least worst thing he did.
    • Mr. Prast. He's a lazy drunk who beats his 11-year-old wife and sends her out to work in unsafe factories to earn booze money. And if that's not enough, then there's three words: Marital Rape License.

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#20982: Jan 15th 2014 at 10:40:09 AM

How the hell is Victor on there? He confesses that he loves Chase more than life and is willing to die for him. Mr. Prast is nowhere near heinous enough and that stuff from the Warden doesn't sound bad enough either

Shaoken (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Dating Catwoman
#20983: Jan 15th 2014 at 11:55:09 AM

On Sundowner, cutscenes are enough, the codec calls just refer to his backstory and thus would count as offscreen.

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#20984: Jan 15th 2014 at 12:02:19 PM

So in Thorgal, does the daughter count?

EDIT: Ah, good, so I won't have to codec-hunt for evidence of Sundowner's monstrosity.

edited 15th Jan '14 12:02:54 PM by ACW

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#20985: Jan 15th 2014 at 12:27:13 PM

Cut Victor Stein. None of the members of The Pride qualify, as they all love their children, and in addition to being willing to die for his kid, Victor's also one of the most loyal members of The Pride—unlike Molly and Karolina's parents, he had every intention of honouring the original deal The Pride made, and in the end when he thinks Geoffrey Wilder (their leader) has betrayed them, he's outraged.

I don't know much about Prast (that's from after I stopped reading) but his section takes place in the past, so I don't know if he's actually that awful by the standards of the setting.

The entry for Warden is awful; if that really is the least of his crimes someone can come here and tell us about the others.

edited 15th Jan '14 12:28:46 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Hodor Cleric of Banjo from Westeros Since: Dec, 1969
Cleric of Banjo
#20986: Jan 15th 2014 at 12:55:06 PM

Wanted to throw in another no for Victor.

In what some have sighted as Unfortunate Implications, Victor is actually probably the most sympathetic member of the Pride (and conversely, the Deans, who seem like friendly Bourgeois Bohemian types, are actually probably the most evil/least sympathetic).

But yeah, none of them count.

Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#20987: Jan 15th 2014 at 1:16:07 PM

[up]Personally I thought it was just Runaways showing the complexity of the situation. There's plenty of abusive parents who would still claim to love their kids. Also, the whole "beat his son with a phone book" thing was retconned in around Volume 7. In the first six volumes the only mention of his being abusive is in his first scene, when he punches Chase once after finding out he's gotten straight Cs in everything.

And yeah, the Deans probably are the worst members of The Pride, but they still care about each other and Karolina, so no qualifiers.

Hodor Cleric of Banjo from Westeros Since: Dec, 1969
Cleric of Banjo
#20988: Jan 15th 2014 at 1:25:48 PM

Didn't know that had been retconned, but in any event, yes, I think it is a measure of complexity that the members of the Pride have quite different personalities/politics/parenting styles, and that a somewhat more personally unsympathetic member is the least evil.

Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#20989: Jan 15th 2014 at 1:31:07 PM

Found this on the Transformers subpage:

  • Galvatron is an insane leader who does more harm to his soldiers than the Autobots. Take Cyclonus, his most loyal warrior. He is his wiping post, and yet Cyclonus still treats him well.

Because that's an entry. His entry for Marvel UK isn't any better:

  • The Marvel UK version of Galvatron. In his first appearance, he dares four Autobots to shoot him, shows their weapons aren't enough to stop him, then beats them all senseless anyway. Then lobotomizes Jazz and gets him to beat them senseless. By the "Wanted: Galvatron" arc, he's planning to destroy half the coast just to gain a new power source. By "Time Wars", he seems to have declared war on the entire Transformers race, being practically the only opponent in a battle that leaves as many as a dozen dead (it's hard to get an accurate body count).

This again, doesn't tell us much, and most of it seems to be "beats people up). And I'm not even sure what it's saying about the Time Wars arc.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#20990: Jan 15th 2014 at 1:37:31 PM

Kill those. They aren't written well enough to give any real idea of his qualifications.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#20991: Jan 15th 2014 at 2:57:18 PM

Burn those Transformers ones...for the last few pages:

For The Heroes Of Olympus if Gaea cares for her children, cut her.

Cut The Hagakure example

I think Master Pieters seems like an addition to Heralds of Valdemar's monsters. Cut all the VC Andrews...that Sherlock example doesn't seem to hit the heinous standard here.

As for ''Runaways'...yeah, nobody counts there, IMO. cut 'em all.

edited 15th Jan '14 2:58:14 PM by Lightysnake

DrPsyche Avatar by Leafsnake from Hawaii Since: May, 2012
Avatar by Leafsnake
#20992: Jan 15th 2014 at 4:37:48 PM

Regarding the Transformers Example, Galvatron was at his worst in the Marvel comics, which I didn't read.

In the Cartoon, he was a very basic villain, just Megatron except more erratic and kinda funnier (they put him into an intergalactic asylum once, he built a gun in arts and crafts), so no.

I also brought up some problems with the Flatline example here. Any thoughts?

Looking at that Sherlock example... anyone see series 3 enough to weigh in on him?

edited 15th Jan '14 4:41:14 PM by DrPsyche

despoa Since: Aug, 2012
#20993: Jan 15th 2014 at 5:33:31 PM

Fucking hell. Malekith of The Mighty Thor got away with everything and is still doing terrible things. Since his arc is done, how can his entry be revised?

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#20994: Jan 15th 2014 at 5:39:59 PM

[up]Kindly spoiler comments like that. I'd say holding pattern, actually. God only knows how this next arc is going to go. I suspect the list is going to get even longer.

AustinDR Lizzid people! (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Lizzid people!
#20995: Jan 15th 2014 at 7:05:59 PM

I'd like to add Abigail Williams from Arthur Miller's The Crucible to the Other Media subpage.

Who is she? Her name is Abigail Williams. This is a reinterpretation of the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and only the things she did in the play should be considered.

What has she done? Prior to the play, she worked as a maid in the Proctor household. She had an affair with the patriarch of the family, John Proctor, and was immediately expelled from the household after John's wife caught on to the affair. Desperate to get into John's pants, she goes out into the woods with a couple of friends, and her servant Tituba. When there, they were to create a charm that would kill Elizabeth (John's wife), and allow Abigail to have him all to herself. However, the town's reverend Samuel Parris, passed through the woods, and Betty collapses. When Abigail realized that if she could get other people in trouble if she were to pretend that she was bewitched, John was as good as hers. Thus, she and her friends started the Salem Witch Trials. One factor in particular is when most of the Salemites were accused of being witches, they were immediately executed when Abigail and the other girls started acting as though the person's spirit was tormenting them. Eventually, she gets Elizabeth charged as a witch, and she is taken to court. When John tried to confess about his sin of adultery to the public, Abigail denies the charges, and then tries to get her friend Mary Warren accused as a witch.

Any Redeemable factors or a Freudian Excuse? No, there isn't any with Abigail. She is shown as being very manipulative and controlling, and doesn't feel anything for other people. It's made very clear from her friends' actions that they are terrified of her. She also threatened to go into their houses and murder them at night if they didn't follow their lead, and also threatened to murder Mary if she tried to speak against her. She also expresses no love for her cousin Betty, and slaps her across the face in Act 1. And if you still think she loved John, ultimately it's shown that she didn't, and she had him arrested and jailed in Act 3. She also wasn't given a Freudian Excuse whatsoever. True, her parents were killed in an Indian raid should've been her start to darkness, the only reason it's a poor excuse is that Abigail mentions it briefly, as if they weren't important to her at all. There was also the reasoning that her reasons for her behavior was because of her social status, but it shouldn't be considered an excuse either.

Heinous in Story? Yes, absolutely. She was the instigator whom allowed the other townspeople to act on their rage and suspicions.

Conclusion Abigail was nothing more than a love-crazed, power-hungry young woman who deserves her status as this.

What do you guys think?

edited 15th Jan '14 7:08:02 PM by AustinDR

OccasionalExister Since: Jul, 2012
#20996: Jan 15th 2014 at 7:09:49 PM

I came up with a rewrite for Ramsay Snow which includes most of his more notable and specific crimes. Here's the old write-up below...

  • Ramsay Bolton is possibly the worst of all Complete Monsters in the series — and by the end of ADWD, he has arguably surpassed Gregor Clegane and Joffrey. How does he manage this? Well, he skins people alive for his own amusement (his whole family has a thing for this, actually; a flayed man is their symbol), hunts down women on his father's feudal lands, and rapes them when he catches them. Once he’s finished, he kills them, then skins them - if they’ve given him good sport. If they haven't, he begins with the flaying. He also tortures captives into insane and broken shells of their former selves, eager to obey him. His signature method is to strip the skin off their fingers and let the exposed flesh fester until the victims beg him to cut their fingers off. And if they bite their own fingers off and rob him of that pleasure, he flays another finger as punishment. Before he rose high enough to enjoy his sports properly, he also had a penchant for raping girls, killing them, and forcing his servant to rape the corpses.

Now, here's my proposed rewrite...

  • Ramsay Snow, the Bastard of Bolton, stands out as one of the most savage and depraved men in Westeros. Suspected of murdering his good-hearted and trueborn brother, Domeric, Ramsay first comes to prominence after he forces the elderly widow, Lady Hornwood, to marry him to gain her lands. Having already killed his new bride by starving her to death, Ramsay only avoids death at the hands of Winterfell soldiers by impersonating his servant, Reek, and sending his "friend" to die in his place. When Theon Greyjoy takes over Winterfell, the imprisoned Ramsay allies himself with Greyjoy and acts as a corruptive influence, ultimately being the one to convince Theon to cross the Moral Event Horizon by murdering two little boys to pass them off as Bran and Rickon Stark. When Ser Rodrik leads Winterfell forces to retake the castle, Ramsay pretends to be an ally only to murder Rodrik personally and has his own forces massacre the confused Northerners. Ramsay then betrays and captures Theon before ordering his men to raze Winterfell and slaughter everyone inside, Ironborn and Northmen alike. One of Ramsay's preferred hobbies is hunting naked, exhausted girls through his father's lands. If the girls give him good sport, he'll rape them then kill them quickly and take their skins as trophies. If they don't give him a good chase he flays them alive after raping them. In fact, flaying people alive is Ramsay's favorite pastime and he engages in it every chance he gets, such as he does to the Ironborn forces occupying Moat Cailin that had surrendered after Ramsay promised them mercy. If he has the time, Ramsay usually flays the flesh off his victims' fingers so that the pain will be so intense that his victims beg him to cut the fingers off completely. Ramsay's psychical and psychological torture of Theon Grejoy is so extensive and brutal that it turns Theon from a cruel Smug Snake into a pathetic, insane wretch that has been conditioned into believing he's the new Reek. No one is safe from Ramsay's cruelties, not even his second wife, Jeyne Poole, the girl who's pretending to be Arya Stark and whom Ramsay abuses despite her being vital for Bolton control of the North. Even her wedding night was filled with torment as Ramsay forced Theon to participate in the bedding. A half-feral beast of a man, Ramsay lives to satisfy his sadistic urges and is so pointlessly and moronically cruel that even his own father, Roose Bolton, only refrains from killing him due to the taboo of killing kin.

Let me know what you guys think.

edited 18th Jan '14 3:34:21 PM by OccasionalExister

sanfranman91 Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#20997: Jan 15th 2014 at 7:17:03 PM

[up] Much better. Adds good detail of his crimes without becoming a Wall of Text. [tup]

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#20998: Jan 15th 2014 at 7:21:16 PM

Absolute [tup] to the rewrite.

Did we go over Abigail before? Can't help but think we did...

TommyFresh Since: Aug, 2013
#20999: Jan 15th 2014 at 7:25:59 PM

[tup] on the Ramsay rewrite. Also, I am pretty sure Abigail was brought up before and I think consensus was against her inclusion.

Hodor Cleric of Banjo from Westeros Since: Dec, 1969
Cleric of Banjo
#21000: Jan 15th 2014 at 7:31:17 PM

I think we did and think it weighed against her inclusion.

Personally, I'm against. I know there's the issue of the play presenting her less sympathetically than in reality, but that aside, she doesn't strike me as standing out in heinousness, when you have everyone else involved in the witch craze.

And there's a possible redeeming quality in love for John (Also, while I know this is part of the play's presentation, I kind of role my eyes at the idea that she gets sole blame for the affair. It takes two to tango)

edited 15th Jan '14 7:33:21 PM by Hodor

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