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
Why thank you Armbar for volunteering for that important task. We all truly appreciate it.
On the topic of Joker YMMV's:
- Cut Knightfall, the incident there is referring to A Death In The Family where he kills Jason Todd. In the story itself he plots to murder one person, the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown is just Batman working out his aggressions from Jason's death combined with some fear gas.
- Cut All Star Batman And Robin because he does very little, and when your hero is a psychotic child-napping madman who has no qualms with killing cops
- The 2008 graphic novel is it's own thing, so it's judged on it's own merits. Joker's pretty bad there, although apparently I missed the rape part (and I've read it twice).
- Cut for Arkham Asylum Living Hell since again he does nothing of note there. He goes on another killing spree, pretty tame for his normal behaviour and doesn't stand out at all in this book.
- For the I'm a Marvel/DC thing I've seen one of their storyline things (I was in University and bored) and they played it seriously (just with a humorous bent at times).
I personally say that an example, once vetted, should always be cited on the corresponding medium subpage. So, if The Joker appears in an anime and qualifies there for Complete Monster, he should be cited on Monster.Anime And Manga. Making it harder to find examples (and story-specific material) is not good policy.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman@21265: The Director had a Pet the Dog moment, wherein he tells his Daughter that he loved her, even after he mutated her into a heaving mass of flesh and psychic power. At the end, it was revealed that she was designed to have the mutation occur around her body, and after she's beaten she emerges normal, and human (inspite of his racism agains humans), realizing that he hadn't made the mutations invasive like many of his other experiments.
Septimus, I think you completely missed the point of what I was getting at there.
Drat, can't argue with that one. Well, let's get Elfen Lied wrapped up then. I'll handle Byzantium and Ichi The Killer in short order.
21252: That's...odd.
Anyway, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 comes out in about a month; we'll have to see if there's anything to add for Satan.
Rovagug and Zon-Kuthon set Pathfinder's divine heinous standard, but don't qualify? Ooh, ooh, I know this one!
- Zon-Kuthon a) is implied to be possessed, and b) still loves his sister and will never ever hurt her. D-D-D-DISQUALIFIED!
- Rovagug, as powerful and dangerous as he is, is a) implied to be suicidal and b) a Generic Doomsday Villain.
What do I win?
Alright, I remember Father Balder was up here once, but nothing happened with him, so I'll try to explain why I think he applies.
To start he, as a Lumen Sage, had an affair with an Umbra Witch and fathered her child, which violated an ancient treaty and pitted the two clans against each other in a war that his side eventually lost. As the only remaining member of his clan, he began the witch hunts, manipulating humans into killing his enemies for him. Now, this may seem like justified revenge, but really, he knew exactly what he was doing when he started the war and he knew that his side would lose, and his orchestrating the witch hunts was for the purpose of getting his hands on his daughter, who was necessary for his plans. The umbra witches, including his own wife, were annihilated, leaving only two survivors: Bayonetta, and Jeanne, her best friend. Jeanne was forced by their circumstances to imprison Bayonetta for hundreds of years, while she herself was later captured and mind raped/brainwashed into serving Balder.
Cut forward to present day, where he sics hordes of angels on entire cities filled with humans, slaughtering everything inside. He ruthlessly and remorselessly kills anybody who opposes him, and callously speaks of the deaths he caused like they were nothing. In the climax, he absorbs a young girl into his own body for a power-up (never-mind the reason why). His end goal? Reviving Jubileus, his god, who would then proceed to annihilate reality.
To sum up, every bad thing that happens in this game is because of him, and while the angels, even the powerful and intelligent ones, are just doing what they're supposed to (they could be as horrible as Balder is, but we don't see enough of them to be able to say for sure), Balder is the ones pulling the strings because he wants to kill everything.
From Bayonetta, right? Omnicidal Maniac who kills many for destruction?
Any thoughts on the Dr. Decker (Nightbreed) and Senator McComb (Timecop) write-ups I posted here
?
Regarding the existing CM reference on For the Evulz I brought up, I'm not sure I agree to cut it. Is the objective to excise all references to Complete Monster from other tropes? Second, it doesn't just state any villain with a For the Evulz motivation to not only merely likely be a CM, but a character defined by that trope. How is it supporting misuse, especially with the addendum I proposed?
Now here's a character I'm not sure qualifies either way: Mrs. Carmody from Stephen King's The Mist. She was brought up once
and cut for having a bad entry but never really discussed. From the film version:
Who is Mrs. Carmody? What has she done?
Mrs. Carmody is a fundamentalist inhabitant of a Maine (of course) town who fiercely believes in a cruel and wrathful god who will purge all sinners. When the town is covered with a mysterious mist housing huge monsters, much of the town is locked up in a supermarket. She sees it as a sign of the Apocalypse and gives herself the mission to 'save' them by preaching her views. After too many deaths she eventually leads most of the people into her cult and whips them into a frenzied mob, seeing herself as a prophet/messiah. She sacrifices one of the soldiers from the army base where the creatures came from to the monsters outside (he pleads his innocence, however). When the heroes turn against her she orders the mob to kill them all and to sacrifice David's 10-year old son and David's neighbor Amanda (whom she calls the whore of Babylon) to the creatures.
Freudian Excuse or redeeming traits?
Tricky. Her Holier Than Thou extremism and quest to "save" the townspeople is treated rather ambiguously, never really clarifying if she's doing it out of a sincere belief that she's a savior or for power or because she's crazy.
Conclusion
She may just be too ambiguous to qualify. She really skirts the line between a regular Hate Sink and a CM. That said, the deleted entry says the book incarnation to be worse, though I'm not familiar with that one.
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"However, someone who is an extreme religious nut can count. Just ask our good friend Judge Claude Frollo. I never watched The Mist before, though. Sorry.
I don't think I can say yea to Mrs. Carmody. Frollo is a genocidal Holier Than Thou hypocrite who uses religion as a cover for what he truly knows is wrong. Mrs. Carmody is just...nuts.
Father Balder is a yea though
Okay. Here's the entry I was looking at.
Journey Through the Multiverse
- Complete Monster: Tsukasa. Not only is he a Manipulative Bastard towards multiple people, but his playing around with the Power Shards have probably made him pretty low. Not only does he manage to mutate Power Shards so their holders will die if they are taken out, but he's managed to have Lilly invent a gun that can downright kill someone, turning them into a Power Shard. This guy has already went around ruining the lives of anyone he comes across. However, after revealing that he's really The Great Leader possessing Tsukasa, and that he took the Overlord's shard, he actually becomes worse than originally thought.
They go into Monster.Web Original, indeed.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanWhere it's his original medium. Also, Monster.The Joker looks bad when written in first person.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I actually think the use of first person is kind of effective. Like Joker is talking about his own qualifications for Complete Monster in detail, without any shame whatsoever.
edited 24th Jan '14 12:23:06 PM by ANewMan

That aside, Mayu's Stepfather is a tricky guy. He's had only one appearance and his sole characterization is "rape" while other villains have even more depravity under them. He's got about the same heinousness of Professor Kakuzawa, though the Prof was stopped from the Rape while he wasn't. The Prof failed because the director has about the same info and eclipses him. Mayu's father has to be judged by a different standard from them, but the heinous bar, in this series is set pretty high, (Irrelevant point, I'm kinda peeved the Director doesn't qualify, I can understand why, but... ugh, that fucking rapist genocidal bastard). Pardon my language.
edited 23rd Jan '14 11:37:49 PM by DrPsyche