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
Not the Eye
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Actually me and Mir planed spliting the comic. Interested in team up?
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to Johnny
Hey, sure thing, Geode.
To Johnny.
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
Happy Birthday, Beast.
-explodes confetti poppers at you-
for Book!Frank Cotton. And Uncle Johnathan “Johnny” Williams.
RIP Toriyama
Yes to Frank and Sauron; abstaining on Johnny
What's the work?
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is considered the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, created in 1926 by German director Lotte Reiniger. Taking heavy inspiration from the stories of Arabian Nights and its ilk, the silent, silhouette-animation film follows the titular Prince Achmed on a quest of love and to save his sister from a wicked magician, meeting Aladdin and a witch along the way.
Who is the Magician? What has he done?
- A powerful African sorcerer with a lustful eye on Princess Dinarsade, the Magician creates a magical flying horse with which he amazes the ruling Caliph. The Magician tricks the Caliph into promising him "anything" from his kingdom in exchange for the horse, to which the Magician chooses a horrified Dinarsade to take as his bride. Before the Magician can complete his desire, Dinarsade's brother Achmed stands up to the Magician, and the Magician repays him by tricking him into using the horse and flying him far away to attempted death.
- Imprisoned by the Caliph for this treachery, the Magician quickly escapes and tracks down his horse, finding Achmed not only alive, but also having fallen in love with the demoness Pari Banu. Out of sheer spite, the Magician knocks Achmed into a snake put, kidnaps Pari Banu and sells her to an emperor to be a Sex Slave in exchange for cash. The Magician then torturously pins Achmed under a giant boulder in the middle of a flaming volcano. The Magician mocks him over Pari Banu's fate and reveals he now will "have your sister!", leaving Achmed to slowly die.
- With help of the Magician's rival, the Witch, Achmed survives and rescues Pari Banu. Achmed runs into the destitute Aladdin, who reveals the Magician is his foe, too: the Magician tricked him into descending into a cave to find a magic lamp, then when Aladdin tried to climb out, the Magician sealed him inside to die. Though Aladdin escaped and used the lamp to make himself a palace, wooing Dinasarde as they fell in love and married, the Magician swiped the lamp and stole Dinasarde for himself to marry—he framed Aladdin for the disappearance so he would be executed by the Caliph, Aladdin narrowly escaping death.
- To defeat the Magician once and for all, the Witch helps Achmed summon him to a final battle, and though the Magician tries to kill them, the Witch destroys him in a magic duel, thus freeing Dinasarde and reuniting her with her true love of Aladdin, while Achmed and Pari Banu live happily ever after together.
Mitigating features?
None, just a creepy wizard dude driven by horniness.
Heinousness?
For the time it was made and limits of the medium, I think the Magician is juuuust bad enough. He torments Achmed and tries to kill him in nasty ways through the film, sells Pari Banu to be raped under threat of death, betrays and seals Aladdin in a pit to die, tries to kill the Witch, and all as he tries to forcefully marry Dinisarde with full emphasis put on his desire to bed her against her will.
Final Verdict?
Thinkin he's just over the line enough to land.
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Ultimate Moral Compass
Magician
Goku Black
magician.
Lizzid people!
Yes for the Magician.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to Johnny.
Leaning yes to the Magician...this rape stuff is made clear as can be done for the time?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
The Draftsman of Doom
Yes to the Magician.
Rawr.
Not the Eye
to the Magician
Magician.
RIP Toriyama
@ACW: Yeah when he hands off Pari Banu to the emperor, the emperor flatout drags her into bed and starts pawing at her and her clothes while she's struggling until she shoves him away; he then hands her off to one of his advisors with the order "kill her or take her as wife!", after which she's dragged kicking and screaming into an isolated chamber to meet her new "husband."
When the Magician comes for Dinisarde he seizes her while she struggles and cries, later says he's going to "have her", and when the heroes rescue her she's laying in a bedchamber crying.
Edited by Ravok on Sep 5th 2023 at 5:44:24 AM
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Wow, not what I'd expect from a 1926 animated film, but there you go.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
for the Magician.
- Turbo Overkill: Maw is a vicious Bounty Hunter who gradually becomes Johnny Turbo's biggest threat. Originally hired by Teratek to stop Syn and kill Johnny after they deemed him a liability, Maw secretly acquired multiple datasets needed to destroy Syn before betraying Teratek and his allies. After narrowly surviving an encounter with Johnny, Maw recovers and uses newfound powers from the datasets to immediately kill Johnny and destroy his brain. In his quest to gain ultimate power, Maw teamed up with Syn, aiding Syn's goals to destroy the whole universe and eradicate all of humanity. Even after gaining unlimited knowledge and power, Maw sought out to betray Syn too, choosing instead to plunge the whole universe into chaos as opposed to rebuilding the universe in Syn's vision.
Oh hey, I was meaning to check that one out. Yes to the Magician.
Ultimate Moral Compass
With Script!Sauron all done, here's another long overdue EP I can take off my plate.
What’s the Work?
The Gentle Touch is a British detective series that lasted 5 series from 1980-1984.
Starring the late Jill Gascoine as the stern Detective Inspector Maggie Forbes—who was the first female lead in a UK cop show—as she works for the Seven Dials station in Central London, often having to balance work with raising her teenage son after the murder of her husband.
While way more down to Earth compared to most cop shows, there is one episode that looks to have a certified keeper.
We'll be taking a look at the Series 2 episode "Decoy", one of the most well-received episodes of the series. Here, Maggie goes face to face with a serial rapist known as "The Frog". The title comes into play when Maggie has to pose as a barmaid to catch the criminal.
Who is He?
"The Frog", naturally, is a serial rapist who prowls the streets of London at night.
What has he done?
Making a habit of abducting young women, mainly barmaids, at knifepoint, the Frog takes them to a nearby warehouse where he abuses and rapes them. The Frog even ties them up and puts duct tape across their mouths so that their screams can’t attract anybody.
Having done this to three women by the start of the episode, with his latest victim Susan traumatized as she recounts the events to Maggie, Maggie goes undercover to catch the culprit and expose his true identity. After multiple close encounters, with the Frog coming close to claiming many more victims if Maggie hadn't arrived to stop him, the Frog's identity is revealed to be seedy, smarmy journalist Max Trenton, who regularly posts reports of his rapes while downplaying them to make them seem more sensational.
Upon Trenton kidnapping a disguised Maggie at knifepoint, he tries to kill her upon discovering his identity, but before he could do that, the cops show up and dogpile him, ensuring his arrest.
Redeeming Qualities?
Zero. Trenton's just an immoral journalist who gets a kick out of sexually and physically abusing women, while writing stories about them to the public.
Heinousness?
Trenton's the only rapist on the show, and boy does he leave his mark. Several episodes even reference his crimes, with Maggie not-so-fondly reminiscing them.
And while he doesn't kill anybody, his rapes are shown to have left mental scars on his victims, and the fact that he intentionally downplays the effects of his rapes in the press to make them appear to be not as bad is just an extra layer of awful, especially for the time.
And keep in mind, some of the other criminals in the show range from thieves to murderers. So Trenton stands out way more in that regard.
Conclusion
Simple keep
Edited by therealjackieboy on Sep 5th 2023 at 6:30:32 AM
"No running in the halls!"
The Draftsman of Doom
Yes to Trenton.
Rawr.
Goku Black
frog
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
If he's the only rapist on the show, then sure, I'm willing to be a bit more lenient.
So for Max "the Frog" Trenton.
The Merry Monarch of Darkness
The Magician and Max Trenton.
Max Trenton
Fanfiction proponent
I was actually thinking of looking more into IDW!TMNT’s probable monsters myself, @Scraggle, @Geode, and @Mir. I’m turning in for the night soon, so I won’t see your reply until the morning, but would you welcome a fourth in your group?
I also write fanfiction.
New EP:
What is the work?
Battlestar Galactica (1978) is the original iteration of the Battlestar Galactica franchise, the fusion of Wagon Train to the Stars with Ancient Astronauts. It is the end of a 1000-yahren (year) war between the Twelve Colonies of Man and the robotic Cylon Empire (they have some allies but most of them are The Ghost save for the one mentioned below), and a truce is to commence between the two parties at a moon known as Cimtar... unfortunately it's a trap, and the Cylons slaughter most of humanity. A ragtag fleet of ships, led by Commander Adama (Lorne Greene) in command of the battlestar Galactica, undertakes a long, hard journey to a previously unknown colony known as... Earth.
Who is the character and what does he do?
The Imperious Leader (Dick Durock, voiced by Patrick Macnee for all iterations) is the current leader of the Cylon Empire and the Big Bad for the pilot episode "Saga of a Star World".
The Imperious Leader (offscreen) first strikes a bargain with one of the Colonies' council members, Count Baltar (John Colicos) under the pretense of peace negotiations: He will slaughter all the colonies save Baltar's, and he can rule them. More on that later. Splitting his complement of Cylon raiders in two, he sends half with fuel to attack the Colonial fleet at Cimtar, with Baltar "advising" the fleet to stay put, leaving them Sitting Ducks; the exception is Adama, whose battlestar survives because he organizes a drill to deploy his pilots. The attack is a resounding victory for the Cylons, leaving all but one battlestar space dust, including the Colonies' president. Now where are those Cylon baseships? They bypass the Colonial fleet at the Cimtar moon, station themselves in the Colonies' solar system, and once they're in range, the Imperious Leader declares "The final annihilation of the life-form known as Man. Let the attack begin." And with that, the baseships unleash their Cylon raiders on all the planets, leaving billions dead.
Adama and his elder son Apollo (Richard Hatch) find survivors and make it known that the fleet is also destroyed. Knowing what will happen to them if they stay, Adama makes it known that all who survived this holocaust find any transport that will carry them, and leave.
Later, the Imperious Leader summons Baltar, displeased that anyone survived. Baltar protests that his people were to be spared so he could rule, but the Imperious Leader declares he's changing the deal (since there's no other side to consider now) and that so long as one human survives, the alliance is threatened. He then orders that Baltar is to be removed for public execution, as he has outlived his usefulness.
Meanwhile, the ragtag stragglers of humanity, protected by the Galactica, finds it way to the Pleasure Planet Carillon inhabited by the Bee People Ovions, which has lots of food, gambling, and fuel called tylium, which every spacecraft uses (and is Made of Incendium). Unfortunately there's a catch: the Ovions lure unlucky guests into the lower chambers where they're eaten by the Ovions' young. The Ovions are also allied with the Cylons, whom they've been supplying with tylium. Seetol, an aide to the Ovion queen, speaks with a centurion (standard Cylon despite the Roman officer title), who tells him to "See that the humans are entertained until the end. Then they will be yours in the lower chambers." The plan is to attack the Galactica to take advantage of a ceremony for Apollo on Carillon and destroy it, leaving the survivors to be eaten by the Ovions over time.
However, Adama has anticipated the plan and left his best pilots on the Galactica, leaving others to disguise themselves as the pilots in dress uniform. Meanwhile, Apollo and his friend Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) discover the Ovions working with the Cylons and decide to destroy the planet to stop the mining operation (to quote Starbuck, the planet is loaded with it). The two rescue Starbuck's girlfriend Cassiopeia from the Ovions and are chased upstairs by a garrison of Cylons, who start shooting everyone they see; a firefight ensues as the civilians run for the exits. The pilots on the ground reach their fighters and surprise the Cylons attacking the Galactica, taking most of the Cylon Raiders out. Apollo and Starbuck go around Carillon to find the Imperious Leader's baseship, then fake transmissions for six squadrons. The baseship pilots, realizing the deception, attempt to retreat, but are caught in Carillon's gravitational pull and with the surface reaching vapor point, the planet explodes, taking the baseship and the Imperious Leader with it.
In the pilot's epilogue, Baltar is introduced to the newest Imperious Leader, who's more tolerant now that the Cylons are omnipotent. He's to chase down the remnants of humanity, in command of his own basestar.
Mitigating Circumstances? Freudian Excuse?
As a robot, there's bound to be a bit of agency issue. The other is a shade of Pragmatic Villainy, where Cylon centurions mention to Baltar that they'd been sparing some civilians who gave them information. However going the other way, said centurions also receive order for extermination, which they carry out offscreen on anyone unlucky to be still around. On other notes the Cylons had been jamming Colonial transmissions and they lift the jamming right as their slaughter begins, leaving everyone on the Galactica Forced to Watch their homes, their people, everything... leveled. Plus he's apparently onboard with people being eaten by the Ovions, so there's that. I'd say each of these goes beyond standard destructive robot programming.
Freudian Excuse? None really to speak of.
Heinousness?
Generally sets it as the instigator of the genocide of the Twelve Colonies, and this is considering the heroes knowingly destroy a planet to stop the Cylons' mining operation. There might be a couple more candidates in play here.
Verdict?
Up to you guys.
Edited by k410ren on Mar 10th 2024 at 10:50:50 AM
"I'll show you the Dark Side." CM actors and kills
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Sure to the Magician, the Frog, The Imperious Leader.
Edited by Bullman on Sep 5th 2023 at 9:29:45 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread