Old Complete Monster cleanup thread
Welcome to the Complete Monster proposal thread! This is the thread where new Complete Monster examples are vetted, approved, and written up. If you're looking for the general cleanup thread (for cuts, rewrites, expansions, and the like), please go here
Important: Before suggesting any new examples, please read the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List; if you have any questions, the odds are high they are answered there. Additionally, please check here for the earliest date a work can be discussed (usually two weeks from the U.S. release date) and whether the work has already been reserved by another user.
Here is how the process works:
- If you have a candidate to propose, you can simply come right in and propose them! If the character's run is brief, such as a single issue of a comic book, then a simple summary of their actions and any potential redeeming qualities will be enough; for longer-running candidates, an effortpost (EP) might be helpful for organizing the proposal. An EP is not outright required, but please be mindful that if a post becomes too clunky and unorganized, it can be very hard for other people to follow.
- After the proposal, there will be a 72-hour discussion and voting period, where people may ask questions and vote on the candidate. The number of upvotes must outnumber the downvotes by at least five for the character to be considered "approved".
- Three days after the proposal has been made, if the character has been approved, you may post the writeup (the text to be posted on the trope page itself) on the thread and send it to the drafts page. Your candidate will soon be added to the CM subpage. If the work has a page, you should add your candidate to the relevant YMMV page. Voila! It's that simple!
Outside of this process, we do have a few ground rules:
- To keep the thread moving at a reasonable pace, there are some restrictions on when a proposal can be made. There should only be a maximum of four EPs posted both per page and per hour to ensure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle; additionally, each individual troper should only be proposing or writing up characters from a maximum of three works at a time (from initial proposals to end of their voting period). If your proposal would fall outside of either of these guidelines, we'd like to ask you to please wait until they would fit within; feel free to type them up on an outside document, and then when the time comes, you can just copy, paste, and post!
- No plagiarism of any kind. This is a very serious matter site-wide, as the website could get in actual legal trouble over this; as a result, this can very quickly lead to mod intervention. This can take many different forms:
- Direct plagiarism, i.e. wholesale copying. This is not only the easiest to find, but is also the most likely to warrant quick moderator intervention. To be clear, quoting in some places is perfectly acceptable, but it has to be very clear you're quoting from something else and it cannot be anything longer than a sentence or two - if you're quoting an entire work summary from Wikipedia, no one is going to believe you've actually consumed the work, so even if you cite your source, your candidate will be downvoted anyway.
- Self-plagiarism. Even if you can prove that you wrote the same text in both places, the site itself can't contain any of the duplicated text. If you already wrote something once before, it's not too hard to write it a second time.
- Using another site's work as a template for a proposal. Just because you don't copy and paste something directly doesn't mean it's any harder to detect if you're basing parts or all of your proposal on text someone else wrote. To be clear, this doesn't violate site rules and won't lead to mod intervention, but just like if you directly plagiarize, no one will believe you've consumed the work if you're clearly basing your proposal on something else. This thread largely operates on the honor system, and tweaking someone else's work to pass it off as your own is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
- Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").
- If you are the first person to downvote a candidate, please provide an explanation of why when you do so. We're here for discussions above all, and a hit-and-run downvote doesn't facilitate anything.
- If a work is already reserved by another user, please don't comment on the work or any potential characters worth discussion before the discussion date. We know how exciting it is when a work has a keeper that you're waiting to talk about, but it's not fair to the person who reserved the work who is just as excited to lead the discussion to see the discussion getting spoiled before they get to do it. On the other hand, if the reservation only has one name attached, shoot them a PM - they may be down for a collaboration, which will get you in on the fun as well!
- Please keep the thread on-topic. While discussing the trope is fun and we encourage people to enjoy it, questions like "who's your favorite CM" are off-topic and can lead to thumps. That's the kind of question to take to people's PMs if they're willing. Similarly, while we encourage friendliness and familiarity with other users, posts should always have some kind of thread-relevant purpose; for instance, if you want to wish someone a happy birthday, feel free to, but if it's the only thing in the post, it's off-topic and needs something else alongside it. Again, though, while we strive for a friendly atmosphere, this is not Facebook; life updates are fun, but unless they have some kind of impact on your thread participation, please do not bring it here - we have Yack Fest for that.
- Please refrain from asking anything along the lines of "How Did We Miss This One?" In almost every case, the answer is simply "No one thought about it before". This Is a Wiki where everyone has different interests, and the fact that people missed a particular candidate, even one that seems like a textbook example of a trope or a character who is particularly iconic in pop culture, means absolutely nothing. The question is disruptive, has a simple and consistent answer, and provides nothing to any discussion.
- If you are suspended from parts of the website, it is still possible to participate!
- For users who are suspended from editing the wiki, you still have full access to this thread. You can propose candidates and write them up with no issues whatsoever; while you will have to ask someone else to post the entry to the relevant pages once it is done, all write-ups are considered thread-approved - as in, done by consensus - and thus doing so does not violate any rules regarding meatpuppeting.
- If you are suspended from the forums, your participation is limited but not impossible. It is still possible for a forum-suspended user to assist in creating the write-up for a character who has already been approved; as previously mentioned, write-ups are inherently considered a consensus-based edit and thus not tied to any one particular user. However, you can not assist in the proposal of a character; as a proposal is based around the forum rather than the wiki, doing so with a forum suspension qualifies as meatpuppeting.
- Please keep all discussions "in-house".
- What other wikis use for CM equivalents is irrelevant here.
- Please be wary of using other wikis, Fandom or otherwise, as sources of information. They are just as fallible as a site like Wikipedia in regards to accuracy because they can be edited by any user, just as this site can.
- Do not attempt to force a communication with an author in an attempt to gather evidence or settle a debate; besides the fact that this is a YMMV trope and thus author intent has variable weight depending on the circumstance, doing so may cross the line into drama exportation, which is prohibited site-wide.
If you would like to use an EP for your candidate, here's the general format. This format does not have to be followed exactly, but these are the main topics that need to be covered:
What is the work?
This is a brief summary of the work you're going to discuss. We don't need a full plot summary here, just however much we need to understand going into the discussion — it can even be as simple as quoting the summary on the work's page.
Who is the candidate and what have they done?
This is essentially the character's biography — who they are, their story, the crimes they commit, and, preferably (though not required), what happens to the candidate at the end. It does not have to include every single thing they ever do — for some villains, we'd be here all day if that was the case — but it should include the highlights of their journey.
Any redeeming qualities? Freudian Excuse?
This is where any potential redeeming characteristics or tragic backstory should be discussed. Do they have a tragic past? Do they show that Even Evil Has Standards or Even Evil Has Loved Ones? Maybe a Pet the Dog moment or two? This is where these should be discussed in full. Not every potential redeeming moment is a clear-cut disqualifier, but we should hear of any potential issues to ensure the character is discussed in full.
Are they bad enough?
A Complete Monster has to be particularly vile by the standard of the work they appear in. Therefore, you should look at what the character does compared to similar characters in the same work. This takes into account things like:
- Their resource level (a human Serial Killer can't stand up to an alien Omnicidal Maniac, but they can be bad by the standard of other human serial killers)
- The amount of time they have to work with (such as a one-shot character versus long-running antagonists)
- The quantity vs. quality of their crimes compared to others (someone with a lower victim count but far more visceral and personal crimes could be considered as equally bad overall as someone with a higher body count but less horror involved)
Essentially, this section is an analysis of the kinds of villainy shown in the work and an explanation of why this particular character's villainy stands out within it.
Final verdict?
This is where you post your final conclusion on the character in question. You can continue elaborating on your reasons or even just say a simple "yes" or "no"; at this point, we've heard everything we need to hear.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This thread tackles very serious and dark matters on a daily basis. We will be discussing things like murder, rape, torture, human trafficking, crimes against children, and in particularly dark cases, several of these issues at the same time. We keep a lighthearted air, but all candidates carry the general assumption that these are awful individuals committing disgusting crimes. We ask that if you participate, you do so with the requisite seriousness such dark topics require; exclamations of how gross something is, whether serious or sarcastic, are disrespectful to the topics at hand, and if you cannot handle such topics, please do not participate.
And that's everything you need to know. Welcome to the thread!
Edited by Twiddler on Jan 17th 2024 at 5:42:49 AM
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
You know, you've convinced me. Melanie is at least The Heavy, even if she didn't start the whole thing.
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Also: SLIGHTLY batshit? ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Edited by ACW on May 10th 2024 at 10:26:03 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Not the Eye
Goku Black
Melanie
Ultimate Moral Compass
Melanie
to Melanie.
Not the Eye
Have another DC villain for us.
Who is Lady Styx? What has she done?
First appearing in 52, Lady Styx is mysterious alien conqueror who leads her army to raze universe until all life is reduced to either her undead slaves and worshipers or resources for her use. Born when pround Alien race tries to unite their intelectual focus into uni-mind in order to force their neighboring planets into agreeing with their views on life. Something went wrong and entire planet was engulfed in fiery death and from the flame, Styx was born. Inheriting giant ego of her precursors, Styx has started inferincg beings with the her Stygian virus that made them her slaves.
When we first learn of her, she has already utterly destroyed teritory Green Lanterns disegnate as Sector 3500 and reduced its hundreds of thriving systems to rubble. Putting bounty on Starfire, Animal Man and Adam Strange after they stood at center of the universe and saw it’s secrets. With Lobo’s help, Starfire and Animal Man infiltrate her ship. Meeting Styx as she is feasting on the blood, she orders them all dissected to be used for their parts and learn secrets of the universe from their brains. Luckily Lobo snaps from religious pacifist phase he was going throught and Green Lantern Ekron to take her into space where she is seemingly killed by Sun Eater. Only for her to burst trought the womb of one of her captives.
Learning that Captain Comet, cosmic hero who battled against her army, got ressurected, she sends her missionaries Darkstars to kill him. They attack asteroid where ressurected Comet has been operating. Somehow getting trapped in dimension of dark matter, she sends Darkstars to Vega System, uniting war torn system by setting up religion worshiping her as god, slaugthering all but five of Omega Men after they refused to worship her. What she actually searches for is Heartstones, mysthical artifacts that would give her power to become God. Gathering two hearstones with one taking Starfire’s brother as host, she sends the Spider Guild (whose Emperor is another host) to Manila, Philippines, where host of last heartstone lives.
Spiders destroy the city and bring thousands of people to her to infect, while Lianna joins Omega Men. She ressurected the Omega Men she killed and Lianna’s mentor to fight them, while leader of Legion Vril Dox ends up trapped with her as part of her plan. She uses situation to have final host Silica, AI in love with Vril, to escape her prison and use bodies of captured humans to create new body for herself. She starts devouring universe, planning to reduce everything to her new body using hosts as her new heart.
They however are able to break the Heart and Felicity, the Omega member who was ressurected but refused to serve her and took Spider Emperor’s heartstone, to devour her. Lady however survived and was trapped in Felicity, and it turns out Animal Man infected with Stigian virus as contigency, which he spreads to Earth and Rann. As more people are infected and turned into murderous zealots devoted to her, she comunicates with them and has them spread, infected on Rann almost carying out genocidal attack against Thanagar. Heroes who beat her find a cure, but Styx got freed and is ready to resume her omnicidal campaing, killing minion who informed her of virus’s failure.
Continuing her crusade, she lays waste to Starman’s homeworld and converts his people. Learning that followers of her enemy Synnar the Demiurge are about to summon him on the Rann (whic has actually continued to worship her despite being cured), Styx leads her armada there. She engages in the battle with Thanagar fleet and tries to convert Starfire into her follower when she comes to offer her alliance. Eventually Styx ship is shot down and she is sent to run once again, only for her ship to shot down.
She returns once again where she posses a woman, eventually devouring her whole body and tries to sabotage Synnar’s attempt to gather warriors for his plot to overthrow the God by killing them. It fails and both she and anything to do with Synnar are never seen again despite still being alive and kicking.
Mitigating factors?
Despite her origin and her talking about inheriting will of Pround People as she calls them, it’s not hinted in sligthest she lacks agency. She claims herself manifestation of Pround People’s vission and talks about how wrong she found universe, but she sadistic egoist with complete understanding of how normal minds work and one issue that deals with her origin never implies her to be slave to mindset she inherited from her indirect creators.
In 52 she way of comunicating isn’t directly translated and another character has to traslate for her. This only happens in one issue and even then we get good idea of her basic character. But after that, she gets lot more talkitative and is consistently shown as egoistical tyrant whose preaching of unity and peace is only front to her ego and desire to either reduce everything into into worshiping slaves or parts of her.
Heinous Standard?
Razing god knows how many planets and turning their inhabitants into zombies and human resources, tries to assimiliate the universe into herself and multiple attempts to reduce universe into zombies that worship her. Easy pass even for post crisis DC.
Conclusion?
Keeper.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Yep.
Edited by EmperorGeode on May 10th 2024 at 8:24:04 AM
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Melanie, assuming this is taken seriously (because the “beaten to death by cereal mascots thing” doesn’t sound like it is)
Goku Black
lady styx.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Eh, sure to Styx. I guess she'll go to Post-Crisis, recurring?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The movie's gloriously batshit, but it is indeed taken seriously.
Edited by ACW on May 10th 2024 at 11:21:50 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Reminds me of the cereal mascot riot from Unfrosted
Styx
to Lady Styx.
Never Ask Me For Anything Ever Again
to Melanie, I saw the movie two weeks back and she very much fits this designation.
for the demon, Melanie Van Der Koy and Lady Styx.
How about the three sages from World's End Harem
The Three Sages for causing the whole outbreak to wipe out the male gender, framing Raymond and stealing research for his virus, and leaving Chloe Mansfield their supposed daughter to be brainwashed and molested to groom her into their pawn, showing that they never loved her.
Edited by Kingslayer38 on May 19th 2024 at 6:49:29 AM
Jogo
Melanie and Lady Styx
Not the Eye
Sounds promising, but we are gonna need more. You have on post above details on how proces for nominating candidates works.
- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths part 2: Joker of Earth-2 decides to destroy the vibrational tower protecting his universe from the anti-matter wave, just to see what happens next. He infects Jim Gordon with Joker toxin and uses him as a distraction to get around the tower’s defenses, blowing him up after he dies from laughter. Joker has Solomon Grundy and Killer Croc keep the Batfamily and guard busy, while he blows up the tower and dooms the universe.
- Black Panther (2021) issues #9-10 “Range Wars”: The Colonialist is an evil space business man whose main business is selling violent, meat eating Ferals as foot soldiers to conquerors across the universe. He enslaves many women across the universe to be dancers for his pleasure. When he wants precious stones that are buried under the land of the Mugabee race, the Colonialist turns the race with whom they share their planet against them, leading to the genocide of the Mugabee. The Colonialist plans to make Earth a feeding ground for Ferals, unleashing them on towns and villages to feed on their people.
Yes.
Edited by EmperorGeode on May 10th 2024 at 12:05:28 PM
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Joker at the end of Tomorrowverse, right?
Also, pending:
- Rebel Moon: Balisarius (Ghal-Sur)
- Galtar and the Golden Lance: Falca (Ravok)
- The Bill: Andy Marshall (Atlantis)
- Vera: Daniel Rede (Atlantis)
- True Detective: Kate McKittrick (Crow)
- World of Warcraft: Yogg-Saron ( ~Forgo Light )
- Devil King ( ~NTG )
- Devil May Cry: The Animated Series: The warden who's also a demon (Passing)
- RWBY/Justice League: Starro (Phantom)
- The Defenders of Remnant: Norman ( ~STARCRUSHER99 )
- Palpatine (xie)
- Devil May Cry: The Animated Series:
- "Wishes Come True": The warden of Devil's Prison is a licentious sadist known for killing all who come to his detention center. Indicated to force attractive inmates to submit to him sexually, the warden also hosts games of "tag", where he and his guards take their true demonic forms to hunt and butcher prisoners at leisure.
He goes below everyone else.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Are we officially doing a DMC page?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Gentle Laborer
Melanie and Styx
Yes. If it isn't a problem, I'll have Mundus written up a bit earlier during Sunday for him and the DMC page to go to this week's batch.
I just remembered that I still need to read more DMC-related stuff, the page and the writeup can wait for a little while, it's possible that we'll have more candidates. And yes, those are his appearances, but his most important one will always be the original game.
He's the Big Bad of the second light novel, and no, I don't think he counts. He's outheinoused by other villains and his interactions with some of his underlings border on Benevolent Boss.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on May 10th 2024 at 4:10:16 PM
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
If you wanna wait, that's fine. I'm having Mother's Day brunch with my parents Sunday, and I like to give it a little time anyway.
Plus I need to do a little research to organize the page chronologically.
EDIT: Mundus will go at the top of the page; what are his key appearances? First game, 2nd game light novel prequel, Visions of V?
EDIT 2: I THINK I know what I'll do with Mundus. Either way, I'll try to create the Sandbox this weekend.
Edited by ACW on May 10th 2024 at 3:01:50 PM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Goku Black
Does Chen the cannibal dude from the character page count. He's from one of the light novels.
Yep to Styx.
Anyone concerned about the Cereal Execution, it's prime horror comedy, leaning on the horror more than comedy. Like something The Joker would cook up.
Yeah, Mundus will go at the top, being the Big Bad of the first game and GSV of the rest of the series.
A cannibal dude not counting is quite something. Either he's not all that or the standard is just that high... and considering the Warden, the Butler and Sid... yeah I can see that.
Edited by PolarPhantom on May 10th 2024 at 12:43:12 PM
So let's give this one a go.
The work?
Boy Kills World is a slightly batshit Action Film where Bill Skarsgard plays a Deaf Mute boy trained by a shaman to take revenge on the ruling Van Der Koy family that killed his mother and sister. Also his inner monologue is voiced by Archer from Archer and Bob from Bob's Burgers.
It's that kind of movie.
So most of the family are more complex than you might initially think. The matriarch Hilda is driven mad and seems to truly love her son, her brother Gideon is tired of being evil and really just wants to be a writer, Hilda's daughter has a Heel Face Turn etc. But one doesn't, and she's the second worst person in the flick.
Who is she and what has she got up to?
With Hilda having become mad and paranoid, hiding away from the world, her sister Melanie Van Der Koy is the de facto ruler of the dystopian city. On paper she's in charge of PR. In practice, she's the one running the show. And one of the duties she takes great pride in is creating the propaganda that keeps the Van Der Koys on top. She also has her husband and brother, Glen Van Der Koy and the aforementioned Gideon, to round up "enemies" for the annual and very public "culling". They have some trouble leading to a massacre of civilians and "criminals"; Melanie is only really annoyed they don't have enough people to execute on live tv, so orders Gideon to get anyone, not caring whom he picks up; we later see one of the people being culled is someone shown as very, very enthusiastic about Van Der Koy rule.
Boy manages to penetrate the Van Der Koys' various bases, getting Glen killed at one point, but gets captured. Melanie is not happy he killed her husband
cause she spent so long moulding him into a perfect host. Yeah, before his untimely death, Glen has a Heel Realisation and tries to defect, expressing frustration at what he's become before he hilariously and unfortunately suffers a Heel–Face Door-Slam.
Melanie declares she's gonna make Boy look "pretty" and weak for the execution as a message to all those that dare oppose the family and has him dragged away. We see what the Culling this year is: A feverish nightmare sponsored by a cereal company. Apparently Melanie had to work really hard to get the company to sponsor the event, which has cereal mascots beating people to death with clubs, paddles and hammers, not to mention not-Capn Crunch stabbing people. But Boy's friends manage to save him, but sadly not the others.
Melanie realises Gideon, whom had his own crisis of morality, had to have helped Boy. She pulls a gun on him, declaring he fix mess, and next we see him he's bleeding out, so we can tell what he told her.
Melanie personally takes to the fight, gunning down both of Boy's allies before he manages to take her out with a giant rolling pineapple.
Tying her down, Melanie mocks him, claiming killing her on air would just make her a martyr... and changes her tune to horror when she realises Boy was gonna kill her by having her impaled on the camera in a cathartically gruesome manner.
Mitigating Factors?
As discussed, none. Unlike the other members of the family, she expresses no humanity at all. While Glenn might have been lying about helping (the place he said Hilda was hosting a party at turned out to be a decoy, which he may or may not have been made privy to being the lowest member of the family), Melanie doesn't even get a token moment of sympathy, the closest moment the film subverts cheerily. She sees her husband as a mere tool, her brother as a loser wannabe writer whom she berates is only good as a thug, her niece she scorns is only worthwhile because of her propaganda and her sister, Hilda, she sees as a psycho unhinged paranoid fool she only brings out to present the culling as a last resort to restore order to the city and credibility to the family name.
Heinous Standard?
So Hilda is, for most of the film, a Non-Action Big Bad, with Melanie calling the shots. She sends Glenn and Gideon out to collect civilians, most of them actually innocent, leading to a lot of deaths and broken families. Gideon himself is sick of it, the Van Der Koys already won, all their enemies dead, but Hilda is so paranoid she keeps it going, with Melanie using the Culling to keep the family's prestige and power. And also sponsorships, of course.
She also turned Glenn into her sycophant worm that does all she asks of him and berates Gideon when he wants to be more than The Brute.
Now, the first massacre of the film is hard to pin to her, because it wasn't her intention - Glen is insulted by a protester, he tries to shoot her in anger and it all escalates. Melanie is callous about the whole thing, only caring Gideon bring her more victims wherever he needs to look. They're also acting on her orders and the massacre occurred because of what she did to Glenn but IDK. For what it's worth, the massacre is the result of her abuse and manipulation of her husband and brother.
Even if we discount the massacre, I think she's bad enough. She keeps the dictatorship running in her sister's absence and ever since Hilda went underground Melanie has kept the Culling going for years, ever since Boy was a boy. And from what we see of the cullings under Hilda, they were simple executions where people were gunned down, and only a half dozen at a time. The Culling Melanie organised has double the victims, most of whom have no actual "crimes" to speak of, just normal citizens, and their deaths are a spectacle, torturous, with Melanie directing cameras to get as much blood splatter as possible. And both Melanie and Hilda target kids as well, though thankfully (in a sense) the children scheduled for Melanie's culling die before being captured. While Hilda wants the Cullings to keep going to find her nemesis "The Shaman", Melanie takes full responsibility and agency in arranging them to be as awful and "entertaining" as she can.
So yeah, being the de facto head of a cruel dictatorial family, running annual cullings of increasing cruelty and depravity and abusing and manipulating her own "loved ones" to be as bad as they can be, I think she's bad enough.
Conclusion
I say yes. What say you all?