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
Writeup time. I'm gonna expand a little bit on Drago to include a few of his crimes from other media (Drago's current writeup happens to be my oldest extant writeup—I wrote that in the YMMV page back in 2014 when I was just about to stop being a lurker).
- How to Train Your Dragon:
- 2: Drago Bludvist, "a madman without conscience or mercy," is the pinnacle of human evil in the franchise and a warlord seeking to use an Alpha he abused into loyalty to enslave as many dragons—and people—as he can. When the chieftains of various Viking tribes after they laughed off his ability to command dragons, Drago had his dragons burn them all alive, leaving only Stoick to tell the tale. Years later, Drago forcibly enslaves all the dragons being kept in a safe haven by Valka by killing their Alpha, before promptly hypnotizing Hiccup's own dragon Toothless into firing upon him. When Hiccup's father Stoick takes the blow instead, Drago glances back in pleasure before commanding all his enslaved dragons to ravage Berk. instances, Drago orders failing minions such as Krogan and Eret executed for flimsy reasons, assassinated the noble King Stormheart and left his daughters orphans, and burned down the village of a group of pacifistic farmers who refused to join him. Drago acknowledges his thirst for power comes out of its own sake rather than a desire to avenge his fallen family, and is ultimately one of the few villains Hiccup was never able to reason with.
- 3: Grimmel the Grisly is a tenacious, ruthlessly pragmatic dragon hunter and the one responsible for the near-eradication of the Night Fury species. Described as a single-minded predator who adores getting under the skin of his prey and pulling their strings, Grimmel stops at nothing to finish off Toothless to complete his genocide, and threatens to kill everyone Hiccup loves and scourge his island of Berk should he resist him. Grimmel tries to cow Toothless to his control by luring him in with the female of his species, the Light Fury, then threatens the Light Fury's life to force Toothless to corral all of Berk's dragons so Grimmel can butcher them and sell them all off. Grimmel has no qualms torturing and drugging dragons to force them to his control, keeping his six Deathgrippers loyal by subjecting them to their own venom and feeding them baby dragons. Grimmel briefly allies with the would-be warlord Eir Stormheart, provided her dozens of dragons to experiment on and bind to armor that kept them in states of constant agony and insanity, before backstabbing her and absconding with her research to create dragon shock soldiers of his own.
Edited by Scraggle on Jan 9th 2021 at 5:45:53 AM
Everything constituting the last sentence is what I took from the video game. If you need you can tag Dragons: Dawn of New Riders before that.
No, I'm not going to mention it because the dude's not a GSV. He's responsible for the Night Fury genocide, yes, but he's demoted to Big Bad literally the second anyone acknowledges that he exists and it's also a fair point others like Drago Bludvist and Johann the Trader are treated as just as evil and could very well have applied to that trope before they, too, debuted.
Edited by Scraggle on Jan 9th 2021 at 5:52:31 AM
I think for Drago I'll use...well, How to Train Your Dragon Films - Drago Bludvist's Army; for Grimmel Fantastic Racism seems appropriate.
EDIT: Oh, and he's not on the CM list by actor, but F. Murray Abraham also played CM Cyrus Kristicos.
Edited by ACW on Jan 9th 2021 at 8:02:01 AM

Hang tight on that, Silv. That and the new 52 incarnations are getting looked into