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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
#26201: Sep 20th 2023 at 6:09:41 AM

@Maxide: I feel like you're ignoring or not fully understanding these characters and their motives. Regardless of if you agree with Thanos' motives or not, he did genuinely care about Gamora and was heartbroken he had to kill her. Senator Armstrong wanted to rebuild America as a way to better itself, even if it meant starting a "war to end all wars." His methods are absolutely appalling, but his motives aren't. He cares about the country and feels this is the only way to make it better.

Salem has too much of a tragic backstory to just ignore and say "well her Freudian Excuse doesn't hold up in the present because she tried to kill Ozma later." If I'm not mistaken she didn't reach that point until after she attempted to kill herself many times and later, out of desperation, threw herself into the Pools of Annihilation/Grimm, which corrupted her.

Tyrian is currently on the "Wait and See" list, so he could count later.

I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
MermaidEyes15 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: He makes me feel like I have a heart
#26202: Sep 20th 2023 at 6:11:15 AM

Yeah, Thanos is too complex with several good qualities, Salem is an Omnicidal Maniac but has too severe of a Freudian Excuse. And Tyrian, imo is a wait and see as his story is left up in the open yet, but I do at least see him possibly counting (he’s a big part of serial murdering Huntsman and Huntresses, the massacre of the election and is the only one of Salem’s grouo who is helping Salem knowing full well of her omnicidal plans)

Michealthehero21 Since: Jan, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#26203: Sep 20th 2023 at 6:16:18 AM

Thanos is definitely far from a CM. He's heinous enough, but has plenty of redeeming qualities and genuine tragic moments, with even his own death being played in a somber light. And having played Metal Gear Rising, I can confirm that Armstrong is a genuine well intended extremist, unlike his minion and currently listed CM, Sundowner.

As for Salem, she's way too tragic to count and I recall her having legitimate redeeming qualities, and Tryian is, as everyone else stated, a wait and see.

Snowy66 Since: May, 2012
#26204: Sep 20th 2023 at 6:28:39 AM

Thanos hated having to sacrifice Gamora and is visibly saddened by it, yet views it as something he must do for the greater good. As delusional as he is, he did feel his actions were righteous. Now Endgame!Thanos being a hypocrite about it is a different story, but either way, Thanos' love for Gamora is genuine.

Ego may have enjoyed being with Peter's mother, but he didn't truly care about her. The difference between him and Thanos is, Ego kills her over a much pettier reason, whereas Thanos believed he did not have any other choice.

Mr-ex777 Since: Apr, 2019 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#26205: Sep 20th 2023 at 7:07:34 AM

These type of questions should be saved for the Cleanup Thread.

miraculous Goku Black (Apprentice)
Goku Black
#26206: Sep 20th 2023 at 7:21:57 AM

Armstrong wouldn't count anyway even thought he's soncerly genuine in his beliefs.

He seems to genuinely like Raiden. And even is proud at the end that he'll make his own way in life Even after being beaten.

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
YorkobeShounen Since: Dec, 2022
#26207: Sep 20th 2023 at 8:03:23 AM

Plus Armstrong is trying to end the War as a business thing

Sure his means are Exreme but you can’t deny he dislikes the status quo with even Raidien agreeing with him to an extent in the post credit scene

Purgatoryisof2 Since: Aug, 2022
#26208: Sep 20th 2023 at 8:07:32 AM

[up][up][up] I don't really see why.

Anyway, yeah, even if the points were true, Armstrong is, to my knowldedge, respectful to Raiden, and Thanos respects Stark, loved Ebony, and felt bad for what he did to Nebula.

ultimate_life_form Since: Aug, 2019
#26209: Sep 20th 2023 at 8:08:12 AM

Armstrong counting for CM is a fundamental misreading of his character

Arawn999 Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
#26210: Sep 20th 2023 at 10:09:22 AM

@Michealthehero21 I don't mind at all. :)

MGD107 Since: Feb, 2015
#26211: Sep 20th 2023 at 1:09:00 PM

[tup] to Paimon.

My sincerest condolences to you Kazuya.

I'm going on holiday tomorrow, so I won't be back on the thread until late next week.

towerator Mad geologist from A village of indomitable gauls Since: Jun, 2018 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
Mad geologist
#26213: Sep 20th 2023 at 1:46:53 PM

My submission: Empress Immortalis from Change: Queen of the Hive

What is the work?

Change: QotH is a sequel to Change, a MLP AU fic. In the original story, Twilight Sparkle learnt that she is a changeling princess, but hid it up until the day of the Wedding Arc, where she meets her mother, who's none other than Queen Chrysalis. Thankfully, in this AU Chrysalis is actually good, she was just desperate for the huge quantities of love Twilight needed to complete her metamorphosis. Together and with the help of Twilight's frieds, they defeat Queen Crudelis, Twilight's great-aunt; however, Chrysalis dies and Twilight ascends as Queen of the Badlands Hive (now the Equestria hive since the old one was destroyed, merged with the remanent of Crudelis' hive, and went public).

In the sequel, the Changelings face a new threat in the form of Empress Immortalis, who reigned as a tyrant over the Changelings for centuries due to her power to use their Hive Mind not just to conmmunicate, but also to directly control them. Defeated in the past and sealed under a mountain, she is inadvertantly reawakened by a careless archeology expedition and starts dominating all Changelings. Twilight herself falls to her power and becomes an unwilling antagonist for much of the story, until she is freed and manages to defeat Immortalis once and for all.

Who is the candidate and what have they done?

Immortalis was born around four millennia before present. Her mother was Queen Calyx, who performed a dark magic ritual before her birth to empower her daughter. Immortalis, at first uninterested by her mother's wishes for her to conquer the world, soon discovers her power to dominate any Changeling through the Hive Mind, and grows intoxicated by it. After killing her mother (under her wishes) and seizing her hive, she soon takes control of all other Changeling hives in the world (all of which are then in the continent of Zebrica), and she proceeds to rule Zebrica with an iron hoof for centuries, enslaving all under her. She leaves only the tiniest amount of self-determination to the queen and none to the drones, with all other creatures being slaves.

One day, however, Queen Crepuscula succeeds at breaking free from Immortalis, and becoming one of the first wielders of the Elements of Harmony she seemingly kills the tyrant. All that remains is her regalia, still thick of her magic. It tries to possess Crepuscula, but she resists and buries it under a distant mountain where nobody would hopefully find it, and where it remains there for millenia as Legend Fades to Myth regarding the Empress.

A few years after Crudelis' defeat, however, an archeology expedition lead by Queen Draco finds the chamber and the regalia within. Unaware of the risks, she immediately gets possessed by Immortalis, who seizes her hive. Queen Draco succeeds in resisting the possession just enough to save Twilight by way of committing suicide, but Immortalis already has manipulated Twilight into carrying the regalia back to all other Queens. There, the Empress assimilates all Queens (did I mention this include immature princesses?) and nearly all Changelings on the planet into her hive, and reforms her body. She proceeds to immediately start her plan of world conquest, starting with Equestria.

Taking a special pleasure in torturing Twilight (who's still conscious within her own body, incapable of doing anything) to remold her into her "pet" due to her reminding Immortalis of Crepuscula, she makes her attack Ponyville in the hope of her killing her own friends. Then, she makes all Queens converge to Manehattan, where all of them are forced to blast the harbor with their strongest magic all at once. The resulting tidal wave rampages through the city while drones massacre any and all escapees. Tens of thousands die.

After losing her body to a fight with Celestia/Daybreaker, Immortalis merges with the Hive Mind and decides to launch a final strike at Equestria, on Canterlot, to fully break Equestria's spirit, intending on letting Twilight deal the final blow on Celestia. She has a few villages on the path of the swarm massacred to the last. However, the last few free changelings and the remaining Mane Six succeed in hatching a plan that frees Twilight, letting the Queen fully purge the Empress from the Hive Mind, destroying her once and for all. With her gone, her control breaks and all 'lings are freed. Yet, years after her defeat many ponies and Changelings (some of which having had no choice but to fight and kill their own friends) alike are left traumatized.

Any redeeming qualities? Freudian Excuse?

Arguably, Immortalis loved her mother, but it was a very twisted love with Immortalis fully expecting to kill Calyx once she'd be of age, and Calyx being all too proud of Immortalis for becoming the immortal tyrant of all Changelings. Since then, thousands of years ago, Immortalis has only loved one person, namely herself. Everyone else, whether Changelings or not, are but instruments of her ego. If she had some kind of love in her youth, she has since then long turned into The Sociopath. Twilight in her final duel with her is in fact quick to call out that for all her talk of her ruling all is just "the natural order", the truth is that Immortalis is simply so narcissistic that she cannot imagine anyone being her equal; and the insult strikes true. In other words, this fits the "Loyal to a horrible cause" clause like Bellatrix to Voldemort, or the "Fully became a CM later" clause like Light Yagami.

Are they bad enough?

Queen Crudelis in the first fic was pretty bad, being The Social Darwinist as her mother told her to be. She killed her mother when the latter came to regret her ideology, then had her sister Queen Avia killed, and later Avia's daughter Chrysalis. Yet, Crudelis genuinely believed that her actions were for the good of Changeling-kind, and when she killed her mother, she felt heartbroken of what was, for her, a betrayal. She also gave the option to her grand-niece to join her, due to her familial links being Thicker Than Water.

Empress Immortalis is far worse. Her resource levels are greater (planetary vs regional), and in her short-lived second reign, she manages to rack a body count of possibly hundreds of thousands in total, making a point of being especially horrible to Twilight along the way. All of the heinous things she does are also fully shown, no Offscreen Villainy here.

Final verdict?

The only thing that could possibly make it an edge case is her relationship with her mother. Other than that she's a clear CM.

Edit: and [tup] for Paimon.

Edited by towerator on Sep 20th 2023 at 10:51:10 AM

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
43110 (Striking Back) Relationship Status: Reincarnated romance
#26215: Sep 20th 2023 at 2:03:11 PM

No clue how we format these titles.

  • LA Confidential (unaired 2019 TV pilot script): Captain Dudley Smith is a charming yet utterly ruthless corrupt policeman. With a history of murder to consolidate the control of the Los Angeles underworld beneath him, Dudley uses the killing of a police officer to galvanize his men into killing the suspect without questioning, while Dudley steals the criminal's heroin to sell. Capturing the crook's partner, Dudley has the man beaten before agonizingly killing him with a knife to the artery, forcing information out of his victim and preparing to hunt for the missing drugs.

ACW from Arlington, VA (near Washington, D.C.) Since: Jul, 2009
Beast from Ontario, Canada Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Browsing the selection
#26217: Sep 20th 2023 at 2:22:01 PM

[tup] Paimond.

Unsure on Immortalis.

So for my family and I have been having a MCU binge and recently watching through the shows. Having finished Daredevil (2015) and The Defenders (2017), I've been wondering if anyone is up for a re-discussion for Nobu Yoshioka ?

I remember years back, he was deemed a case for Just Following Orders, but watching these shows, I don't know if that holds up. Yes, he answers to Murakami, who is one of the Hands actual leaders — but at the same time, he's not what I'd call your average grunt. As The Dragon, Nobu is shown to have considerable authority within Murakami's branch of the Hand, and is the one running his operations in New York, while Murakami stayed home in Japan doing his own thing.

Even if Nobu is a cog in the Hands' plans, he's a pretty big cog considering his operations were initially the most proactive in their excavation of New York — contrasting with their actual leader in New York, Alexandra, who spent most of her time living a mundane upper class life, and only got involved after Electra was found (by Nobu).

Edited by Beast on Sep 20th 2023 at 3:17:35 AM

"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."
EmperorGeode from A Galaxy far, far away Since: Oct, 2022 Relationship Status: On the prowl
#26218: Sep 20th 2023 at 2:44:39 PM

Is there any evidence Immortalis stoped loving her mother?

[up] Sounds worth disscusion at least (assuming he has no Reddeming qualities and is bad enought).

towerator Mad geologist from A village of indomitable gauls Since: Jun, 2018 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
Mad geologist
#26219: Sep 20th 2023 at 2:52:50 PM

[up] Her mother isn't mentioned after she dies (she's only seen in flashbacks) and Immortalis feels no regret killing her. By then she has embraced her social darwinist ideology so fully that it's just the "natural" thing to do.

Also, it might be needed to add that killing your mother once you're of age is not standard practice among Princesses, with others being shown either waiting at their mother's hive for the mother to die, or leave with a portion of the swarm to found their own hive.

Edited by towerator on Sep 20th 2023 at 11:53:38 AM

TBmacho22 Since: Jul, 2021 Relationship Status: Holding out for a hero
#26220: Sep 20th 2023 at 3:40:50 PM

I have a CM image proposal. It's of Brevon from Freedom Planet

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_20230920_183924.png

WetFlannels Classy, Refined, Unstable from Nearby, on a cosmological scale. Since: Oct, 2021 Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Classy, Refined, Unstable
#26221: Sep 20th 2023 at 3:49:56 PM

No to that image, I have no idea what's happening.

What's wrong D-16? Rise up!
Siegfried1337 Calabash. from The Eastern Luminant Since: Sep, 2018 Relationship Status: Will you go out with me to the End?
Calabash.
#26222: Sep 20th 2023 at 3:54:15 PM

No as well.

BTW, I noticed that krimzonflygon2 has not been in TV Tropes for 1.5 years now. Would it be fine to say that whatever series he planned to discuss is up for grabs?

Eh, good enough.
TheGrayFox ....Phenomenal from A Lovecraftian fishing village Since: Sep, 2011
....Phenomenal
#26223: Sep 20th 2023 at 4:23:39 PM

[tup] for Paimon.

Unsure on Immortalis.

Not feeling the Brevon image either. While I know what's happening in that scene, and it is certainly nasty enough in context (he's torturing the hero via electrocution while one of her allies is forced to watch, for anyone wondering), it doesn't really come across very well in image form.

There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
fanman "To watch it all burn." from Earth-Prime/Earth-1218 Since: Feb, 2022 Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
"To watch it all burn."
#26224: Sep 20th 2023 at 5:14:07 PM

[tup]Paimon. Sorry for your loss, Kazuya.

MermaidEyes15 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: He makes me feel like I have a heart
#26225: Sep 20th 2023 at 6:04:47 PM

Gonna go ahead and reserve Dead City and The Daryl Dixon show just in case if that’s fine by y’all


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