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
Thank you for the advice. I usually try to save my effort posts in a hard drive, but I occasionally forget to do so. Unfortunately, this was one of those instances. Now, I'll have to make a greater effort to ensure that I save ALL of my effort posts in some place.
Edited by DrUnknown on Jul 7th 2020 at 7:31:41 AM
As I said yesterday yes to Onaga. BTW I'm probably going to be off the site for the rest of today, the shutdown and a bunch of minor real life things have left me feeling out of sorts today.
I just use google docs especially since it gives word count and I don't have to worry about accidentally posting or missing thread activity wile I work.
Edited by papyru30 on Jul 7th 2020 at 8:34:00 AM
to Onaga
Okay, so just finished rewatching a series from my childhood and found at least two candidates. Here's the first one.
What is Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century?
A 1999 series that aired on Fox Kids in which Dr. Moriarty is resurrected in the 22nd Century by a mad scientist. With Moriarty simply too intelligent and dangerous for anyone else to face, Inspector Beth Lestrade finds the preserved body of Sherlock Holmes and resurrects him to once more face his nemesis.
This particular villain is from the episode The Deranged Detective.
Who is Culverton Smith and What have they Done?
Dr. Culverton Smith steals a cash of experimental nanobots from Midgard, the mental health institution he works for. When Inspector Lestrade finds evidence suggesting he's the thief, he sends her a booby trapped puzzle box (stolen from his superior in order to incriminate her should anyone catch on) that injects her with the nanites, effecting her mind and turning her into a feral, insane lunatic under his control whom he has set her own apartment building on fire to destroy the evidence, which would've endangered the entire building if Holmes and Watson hadn't arrived to stop it. He then commands her to attack New Scotland Yard's computer to destroy the rest of the evidence of his crime (once more setting the building on fire), during which Lestrade fights against the nanites trying to stop herself from attacking Holmes (showing she's still conscious in there).
When Lestrade is brought to Midgard, where she's incarcerated as insane as part of Smith's cover up of his crimes. When Holmes catches on, Smith sends him a booby trapped puzzle box to drive him insane and have him incarcerated as well. The puzzle box successfully gets his boss arrested for his crime, at which point Smith orders Holmes, who he believes to be under his control, to murder Lestrade to completely cover up his crime at which point he'll use the nanites to completely wipe Holmes's memory to cover up his crime, all the while smiling and enjoying every minute of it.
When Holmes reveals he outsmarted him by only feigning to have been effected, Smith restrains him to a table and activates the nanites in Lestrade to bring her and have her attempt to kill Holmes for him while Holmes is defenseless, all the while he's smiling and enjoying it. Watson, however, manages to destroy his remote, freeing a justifiably furious Lestrade, resulting in Smith being arrested.
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Smith invested all his money in a lunar resort that went bust and lost it, so he does need money, but that doesn't nearly justify what he does and he clearly enjoys what he's doing, making it completely mute. He's also a successful neurosurgeon who likely could've made it back quickly anyway.
Lestrade is shown to be conscious while under his control, resisting once and instantly being furious with him specifically for what he made her do. Though due to the show's general nature, this doesn't have lasting consequences, this is a kid's show from the late 90s/early 2000s were that was extremely common.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
The show's villains are in general thieves, don't actually have a potential body count, or sympathetic.
Moriarty doesn't qualify because he intentionally goes out of his way to ensure as few people are harmed as possible by his plans due to having standards and even if he did have a higher heinous standard, he and his Dragon Dr. Martin Fenwick are presented on a completely different level than every other villain in the series by a huge margin, with far more resources and just capability to do things. For reference: Moriarty's plans normally are aimed at world domination and he's smart enough with the resources to nearly succeed to the point Holmes sometimes deduces his involvement purely because he's the only one with the brains and resources to pull it off. The average villain is after stealing the macguffin of the week, revenge, or something else fairly small scale. Comparing Smith to Moriarty and Fenwick wouldn't be close to fair.
Moriarty DID brainwash people to commit crimes, more than Smith did, but those people were never asked to do anything remotely as bad as what Smith tried (only stealing some stuff for his plan), Moriarty just left them be after they'd served his purposes, and the brainwashing was of a far less severe variety. And again, Moriarty has resources Smith couldn't even dream of having (Smith is pretty much flat broke and has to go through a convoluted scheme just to get control of one person compared to Moriarty who has a criminal organization and is one of the smartest men alive).
New Scotland Yard does perform some Heel-Face Mind Screw stuff, but it's ultimately more 'suppressing criminal urges and promoting positive ones' than anything else and often fails to meaningfully change the person, and even then is reserved for very serious crimes. It's also far less severe than Smith's version.
The only villain who I think matches Smith's heinous standard is the other potential candidate I had in mind and while I consider them even, if either is worse than the other, it'd be Smith.
Final Verdict?
I think he counts, given this is a kid's show, and thus two attempted murders by forcing people to kill their close friends, driving one person insane and trying to do it to the other, endangering two entire building's full of people all the while clearly enjoying every minute of it is a pretty nasty piece of work. So
.
Edited by Godzillawolf on Jul 7th 2020 at 11:48:53 AM
He personally delivered the puzzle box to Lestrade so he'd have to, and New Scotland Yard's HQ is the HQ of the country's police force, so kind of impossible for him not to know he's endangering people.
He's also the doctor overseeing Lestrade, so he'd know everything she did and clearly doesn't care who she endangered.

Voted on this before, but nevertheless,
for Onaga.
And just a pro-tip, save everything in a word/text document. And flash drives. And Dropbox accounts. Spent over two hours yesterday making a new page and now the whole thing's gone. But I wrote all the page's text in a file on my PC, so all I gotta do is just copy/paste everything once editing is back. Being a pack-rat does have its advantages sometimes.
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.