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
I know that. I'm just reiterating that her actions are played seriously. However, the definition for a GDV is that their appearance is so vague, that simply put, if you take them out of the equation, the story will still work the same. Suppose that you put the Shadow Queen out of the game. Would it be like nothing had changed had she not been a part of it?
If the Shadow Queen was just some powerful magic spell Grodus was trying to find instead of an ancient evil being, then all that would need to change in the main story is the final boss fight, whether it just be a corrupted Peach or something. Her own direct actions consist of possessing Peach, attacking Grodus when he tries to get her to serve him, attacking some of the audience members (don't remember this clearly), and serving as a boss fight.
Emphatically easily. She's basically an evil macguffin. As I said, the only reason I can imagine for why anyone would even add her is that she's played completely seriously, in contrast to the overwhelming majority of the game - but so's Grodus, who's onscreen a whole lot more.
Also, the stuff with the black boxes is Played for Laughs.
edited 7th Apr '14 4:08:04 PM by nrjxll
- Complete Monster: Gus. Lets count how many ways he goes over the Moral Event Horizon: He's apparently attempted repeatedly to take over the pack by murdering the cool old dude; it's heavily insinuated that he killed his wife; he has been beating, molesting and raping his daughter for years; he keeps said daughter in his house as a naked sex slave and when he's not busy raping her, he makes her do all the housework; she only leaves as much as she does cause the Pack found out about her when she should have been starting high school — she was never allowed to leave the house before then; it's highly insinuated he plans on taking Werewolf!Sarah as his new wife; his ideas on human-werewolf interaction are less "lets hide" and more "lets eat"... It's so bad that the pack held a vote on if he should be killed for their own safety, he only survived by two votes, both of which have later mentioned they wish they had voted differently.
- Cue Fridge Logic as to why they don't just vote again.
- They did vote again - to remove him from the elder council. They can't kill him because rubbing out a sheriff's deputy would potentially cast unwanted light on the operation.
- Cue Fridge Logic as to why they don't just vote again.
Natter aside, this might be a keeper.
So if Shadow Queen's not CM material, is Grodus? Was that ever determined?
BTW, how's this for a writeup for Jafar?
- As the Big Bad of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, Jafar is as bad as it gets. A true Bastard Bastard and Evil Sorcerer extraordinaire, his plan is to enslave three genies and use their combined magical powers to wish for the rules of magic to be changed so that he may become the all-powerful ruler of Wonderland. Cruel, utterly ruthless, devoid of empathy, and detached from humanity, not an episode goes by in which he does not threaten, manipulate, torture, murder, or all at once in order to get what he wants. Jafar's most noteworthy atrocities were changing the woman who loved him and taught him sorcery into his serpent staff, threatening to murder Alice's father in order to make her surrender her two remaining magic wishes, and not only murdering a young woman in cold blood just to get a reaction out of her lover, but later reviving her and making her fall in love with him right in front of said lover, who is powerless to stop it. Worst of all is that we're led to believe that he ultimately just wants love from his abusive father and wishes to change the rules of magic in order to force him to give him affection, but it's revealed that he really wanted to make his father love him so that the peace of mind and vengeance he'd get out of murdering him afterwards would be sweeter. In the end, all Jafar truly wanted was power to do whatever he pleased with.
edited 8th Apr '14 4:07:39 PM by ANewMan
@24008
I highly doubt the show has that many contenders. Are you familiar with it, and if so, can you give us a breakdown?
EDIT: Since we seem to have decided to split the DC page again, I've been looking over it. I was thinking that in addition to the Pre/Post-Crisis split, we might want to give some thought to putting Elseworlds characters like Mayor Cobblepot in their own section, and maybe separating Vertigo from DC. Thoughts on that?
Anyway I think the only ones we'll have to move into the Pre-Crisis section will be Mongul I and Commander Blanx. Brainiac will have to be split into a Pre-Crisis entry and a Post-Crisis entry, since he qualifies in both. Beyond them, I think that most of the villains can stay in the Post-Crisis folder, as it wasn't until after the Crisis that most of them got truly horrible. The only one I'm wondering about is Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash. His attempted murder of Iris Allen is included in his current entry, despite it happening Pre-Crisis, as it (unlike almost all other Pre-Crisis stuff) remained in continuity. All the other horrible stuff he did, occurred after the Crisis. With that in mind I think we can just keep him in the Post-Crisis folder.
What say we all?
edited 7th Apr '14 5:03:48 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
If you wanna take on that task, be my guest. May be a good idea though to create a Sandbox.
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Good writeup. Maybe mention about how he originally loved his mother but didn't bother to raise her? And holy crap, I looked at his character page, it's Sayid!
edited 7th Apr '14 5:28:16 PM by ACW
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Yep. I give you Dickie Bennett
◊.
I'll start working on that in the next couple of days.
edited 7th Apr '14 6:14:17 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Gus is definitely a keeper. Let me work on a rewrite.
- Gus from Peter Is the Wolf is a truly nasty piece of work who acts out of a belief that the only value in anyone is in strength, and that the strong can and should take anything they want from anyone they can take it from. In his case, that includes killing his wife, then beating, molesting and raping his daughter for years, keeping her in his house as a Sex Slave. He initially tried to keep her existence secret from the rest of the pack, and she had never left the house until they found out about her just before she should have been entering high school. Additionally, he has repeatedly tried to take over leadership of the pack, plans on taking Werewolf!Sarah as his new wife, and sold out his own kind by siccing The Men in Black on Peter, partly out of hatred for the existence of a runt and partly out of a desire to remove an object of his daughter's affection. Some time before the start of the comic, the pack held a vote on if he should be killed for their own safety. He only survived by two votes, both of which have later mentioned they wish they had voted differently, and the only reason they haven't held another vote is to keep unwanted attention away from the pack.
I think that would be a bad idea. While some intractable disagreements may have to come down to one, ideally this shouldn't be a trope determined by popular vote. Requiring people to at least post about their opinions on a character should be the least we can do.
edited 8th Apr '14 3:01:53 AM by nrjxll
Also, let's cut Tycho if we can't even tell what he DOES.
All, The Tall Man...
Who Is He?
The Tall Man is a mysterious and tall man who poses as an undertaker from the Phantasm film series. Seemingly a dour, grim-faced man, the Tall Man is far from human and wields an army of silver, flying spheres that produce blades and literally drill out a victim's brain. The Tall Man forms a deep enmity with a boy named Mike, his brother Jody and their friend: retired ice cream man and all around badass Reggie Bannister.
His goal? To dominate the world, as well as enslave the dead. The Tall Man steals corpses and has them crushed to dwarf size where they become his servants. He goes from town to town, until the inhabitants are simply gone. The more dead, the more he incorporates into his dark army.
What Does He Do?
Tons upon tons of murders. He wipes out entire towns, and to show he's a petty bastard as well, he blew up Reggie's house-with Reggie's family inside it. He relentlessly hounds Mike, killed Jody, uses humans are puppets for his spheres. The Tall Man obliterates the heinous standard quite easily. He's the only villain, so there's no competition.
I also must remark on Angus Scrimm's powerful performance. He imbues the Tall Man with an utterly terrifying presence and charisma that makes the character so frightening. His dialogue is awesome ("you play a good game, boy, but now the game is finished! Now you DIE!") and his actions are always highlighted with a touch of cruelty.
All in all, he passes here, and his murdering people to convert them by the truckload into udnead slaves? Yeesh
Freudian Excuse or Mitigating Factors?
Now HERE'S the rub. The Tall Man has no redeeming qualities. He seems driven by nothing but greed and the will to dominate, but after four films, he's extremely mysterious to say the least.
The continuity of the films is all sorts of...trippy, too. Each film ends on a cliffhanger that leads into the other, but sometimes it becomes blurry as to which end is valid. The first film ends with "All Just a Dream", only for Mike to arrive in his room with the Tall Man waiting for him...the second film begins with Reggie rescuing him, only for that to not be real and Mike spends years in a mental institution. Reggie becoems a believer when the Tall Man kills his family and he and Mike set about hunting him down.
There's no doubt the stuff I listed above happened, though. The Tall Man still commits all his deeds. Here's what we know about him: Mike, at one point, goes back through time to encounter a kindly mortician named Jebediah Morningside, who's obsessed with life and death and the secrets thereof. Morningside, of course, resembles the Tall Man to a T, but has none of his personality or evil. He begins trying to build a gate to the other side and succeeds...
And Jody, Mike's spirit guide, says "Now Jebediah Morningside never does come back." ...and after the nice old man steps through...the Tall Man returns, with his familiar scowl and holding a sphere. It's implied something is wearing his skin. Even more, the Tall Man is indicated to just be a physical manifestation of whatever its true body is in the other world as every time the Tall Man is destroyed, a new one pops up, even if it's just minutes later.
So it's the same being, but it's a villainous example of Save Scumming. Whatever the Tall Man is, he ascribes to a very understandable human nature with pettiness, hatred and revenge being part of what he does, and the only reason he ever spares is enemies is to file them away for future use.
In conclusion? I don't know. He hits every point on its face.
Heinous enough; the only qualm is we don't know what caused Morningside to change. Brainwashed? Grand Theft Me?
- Also, any more detail on Aurum? I did some more research, and he doesn't seem QUITE as bad as a CM would, IMHO. BTW, Shadow Queen is a stay unless voted down.
edited 8th Apr '14 7:33:57 AM by ACW

@ACW: Tycho. The Shadow Queen is played seriously, though.
edited 7th Apr '14 2:23:12 PM by AustinDR