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Complete Monster Proposal Thread

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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:

    Process 

  1. 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.

  2. 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".

  3. 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:

    Ground Rules 

  1. 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!

  2. 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:
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.

  3. Don't delete an EP unless you intend to swiftly repost it. We know that there are reasons why you might want to delete an EP, especially if it's being downvoted - rejection is hard, even in a low-stakes environment like this. However, deleting it renders the current discussion null and void, makes it impossible to reference the discussion in the future and can confuse tropers who didn't read it before the deletion. If the issue is temporary (such as formatting problems or a post getting overlooked as the thread moves on), then deleting and quickly reposting the EP is a valid option, but to fully retract an EP, please use the [[strike:]] markup instead.

  4. Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").

  5. 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.

  6. '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!

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. If you are suspended from parts of the website, it is still possible to participate!
    1. 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.
    2. 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.

  10. Please keep all discussions "in-house".
    1. What other wikis use for CM equivalents is irrelevant here.
    2. 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.
    3. 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:

    Effortpost Template 

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 Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2024 at 3:13:36 PM

Tyk5919 Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
#25651: Sep 11th 2023 at 9:02:29 AM

I think the Intelligence was brought up before and also voted down. And I don't believe any new information has been brought up here. So [tdown] for the Intelligence.

I can see where you're coming from, Nox, but this kinda has a similar feel to Ultron. They're both sapient A.I.-ish entities, but they think humanity is the worst thing for the world that needs to be exterminated.

I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
CapitanoNox Lord of Space from Italy Since: Oct, 2018 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
Lord of Space
#25652: Sep 11th 2023 at 9:30:32 AM

Except with Ultron we actually know he saw human violence, while with the Intelligence we simply know it looked info about humans.

NTG Since: Aug, 2014
#25653: Sep 11th 2023 at 9:31:53 AM

[tup] for the (not so great) Intelligence. Calling humans virus sounds more like Fantastic Racism to me.

CapitanoNox Lord of Space from Italy Since: Oct, 2018 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
Lord of Space
#25654: Sep 11th 2023 at 9:37:38 AM

Plus, let's not forget it looked info about humans after it had already gone on the ship and conducted its first attack and unless I remember wrong nothing indicates it knew anything about humans beforehand, so it essentially attacked humans before it even actually decided they were dangerous.

Edited by CapitanoNox on Sep 11th 2023 at 6:39:52 PM

DoodSlayer136 It's Him from SAGE (Snick Amateur Game Expo) (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
It's Him
#25655: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:14:46 AM

Not seeing how "it attacked first" and "we never see how it learned about humans" automatically makes it a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. No to the Inelligence.

CapitanoNox Lord of Space from Italy Since: Oct, 2018 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
Lord of Space
#25656: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:23:59 AM

Because it doesn't really give a solid base to call it a Well-Intentioned Extremist?

Snoketrope Barb / Temporary Kylo from California Since: Oct, 2020 Relationship Status: Waiting for Prince Charming
Barb / Temporary Kylo
#25657: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:28:40 AM

I...think I am good with The Intelligence? IDK he sounds like a pretty standard A.I. Is a Crapshoot baddie(Or atleast the alien equivalent to that) to me. So, tentative yes unless there is some pathos I am missing.

Edited by Snoketrope on Sep 11th 2023 at 10:30:05 AM

Bow to the Prototype
Ansori Lord Someone of Somewhere from Barcino Since: Mar, 2020
Lord Someone of Somewhere
#25658: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:36:30 AM

Can confirm what Nox is saying, having also seen the film (and read the comic it was based on). It comes off more like a sadistic destroyer and a hypocrite than a faulty AI wary of humanity. Behind-the-scenes stuff describes the Intelligence as an alien virus, too.

Tyk5919 Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin Since: Mar, 2011 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
#25659: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:36:36 AM

@Nox: ...But if we know it looked up information about humans, isn't that the same thing?

I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
Libraryseraph uu~ from Canada (Handed A Sword) Relationship Status: Raising My Lily Rank With You
uu~
#25660: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:39:55 AM

Abstain on the virus, but Nox I would really appreciate if we didn't have to go through this whole song-and-dance every time you want to propose a contentious candidate

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FOR MARIA
CapitanoNox Lord of Space from Italy Since: Oct, 2018 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
Lord of Space
#25661: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:43:37 AM

@Tyk: I mean, eh? IDK maybe that's just me but it doesn't seem explicit enough to me.

@Library: With all due respect, but I have the right to make arguments and counter arguments just as much as people have the right to abstain or downvote.

Edited by CapitanoNox on Sep 11th 2023 at 7:44:46 PM

Libraryseraph uu~ from Canada (Handed A Sword) Relationship Status: Raising My Lily Rank With You
uu~
#25662: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:52:05 AM

I never said you don't have that right, I am saying a) at some point you have to acknowledge ofher points if view even if it means your candidates don't get up and b) you sure don't act like you think other people have the right to abstain and downvote

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FOR MARIA
CapitanoNox Lord of Space from Italy Since: Oct, 2018 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
Lord of Space
#25663: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:55:04 AM

I honestly don't understand how I am giving such an impression here. I have tried be respectful with this proposal and have merely responded to the arguments made, while trying to be polite when responding.

Edited by CapitanoNox on Sep 11th 2023 at 7:55:32 PM

TheMadCr0w (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Get out of here, STALKER
#25664: Sep 11th 2023 at 10:58:52 AM

[tdown] Intel

Skynet is another interesting comparison—it hates humans because it sees them as a threat to itself and over time began to enjoy slaughtering the remnants of humanity. This thing also looks it it sees them as a threat to itself—much like Skynet— but here it seems genuine, the Terminator movies establish Skynet as having the personality of an hypocritical Evil Overlord that always wanted a world enslaved by it, the Intel on the other hand acts like a program following a script to defend itself from the "dangerous species", its genuinely afraid of us and trying to survive what it thinks is a "virus".

"LIFE-FORM ANALYSIS COMPLETE. SPECIES IS DESTRUCTIVE, INVASIVE, NOXIOUS, HARMFUL TO THE BODY OF THE WHOLE."
"What species?"
"MAN"
"YOU ARE VIRUS"

therealjackieboy from Austin, TX Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
43110 (Striking Back) Relationship Status: Reincarnated romance
#25666: Sep 11th 2023 at 11:04:33 AM

Yeah that cements it for me and given the warped thinking I feel Beasts' Blue-and-Orange Morality point seems apt.

miraculous Goku Black (Apprentice)
Goku Black
#25667: Sep 11th 2023 at 11:18:35 AM

[tdown]intelligence

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
EmperorGeode from A Galaxy far, far away Since: Oct, 2022 Relationship Status: On the prowl
NTG Since: Aug, 2014
#25669: Sep 11th 2023 at 12:27:20 PM

Okay, yeah that changes things. Switching to [tdown] for the Intelligence

MGD107 Since: Feb, 2015
#25670: Sep 11th 2023 at 12:35:55 PM

[tup] to Lucas Fortune.

[tdown] to the Inteligence.

Powermaster201 The Emperor of Evil! Since: Apr, 2019 Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
The Emperor of Evil!
#25671: Sep 11th 2023 at 12:49:10 PM

Eh, yeah [tdown] to the Intelligence.

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
#25672: Sep 11th 2023 at 12:49:42 PM

I don't know who's doing what anymore, but here's what's pending and who proposed them:

CapitanoNox Lord of Space from Italy Since: Oct, 2018 Relationship Status: Getting away with murder
Lord of Space
#25673: Sep 11th 2023 at 1:14:52 PM

Welp, guess the Intelligence is gonna get downvoted.

I do know the comic and game (yes there's a game too) versions are likely different enough to be worth a try, but I never really saw either and only vaguely know them so I don't feel comfortable to do a proposal myself.

Meantime I don't know anything about the novelization beyond how the alien's called in it lol.

Edited by CapitanoNox on Sep 11th 2023 at 10:15:27 AM

rosewood47 from A Padded Cell (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
#25674: Sep 11th 2023 at 1:18:03 PM

[tup] Lucas

[tdown] Intelligence

Edited by rosewood47 on Sep 11th 2023 at 4:18:12 AM


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