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.
- 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.
- 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 Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2024 at 3:13:36 PM
RDR duo
to Fussar and Cornwall + the RDR duo.
Another creep who's been compared to Ramsey Bolton is about to be cycled through:
What is the work?
Choices: Stories You Play makes up an anthology of games known as "books", including Most Wanted, The Freshman, and The Crown and the Flame, etc. The proposed CM comes from the last of the three, and he contends with the protagonist Kenna (who you can RP as) while she tries to build an army to take back her kingdom.
Who is Bartel Gremley? What has he done?
Bartel Gremley is an intolerant, snappily dressed trail bard who conspires with the indigenous-to-trail Marco in spectating weapons master canons to decide whether they should have any ignominy of being spoofed by the heroes eerily similar goals, before deciding entirely on his own to cheat them out of their wills and wages before not just killing them, but lynching them, using monks left and right to "make an example" of the heroes.
After burning one monk's monastery to the ground, a suspicious Bartel continues on the warpath in Kenna's direction, knowing that the Empowered Badass Normal Dominic would save himself a headache and feel compassion for the monk after stalling the maze for Mechataur, who was a staple of their childhood, to continue a reboot of the trail when Bartel needs to multitask so as to anger him enough to supercede orders from Marco. Sure enough, Helene is supportive of this naturalization, but would feel terrible abandoning the more Stormholt-castle oriented King Luther even if it were for a very short period of time, so she compromises by joining Bartel in persuading Marco to be patient in arresting Dominic, since they both want to mesmerize him and keep him away from the monk (Bartel so that he can burn down the reconstructed monastery without Marco Cutting the Knot and using a canon laser, Helene so she can steal the bounty on the monk to give back to him). This backfires when Bartel shows up Rose, Trystan, and their mother Margaret, who had been the ones to free the monk from his cell.
When the time comes, Bartel impugns on a "date" that would have invovled retrieving the note talking about Marco that Dominic's pet hawk carried as a way to (falsely) make it up to him for shooting the hawk down and eating it and give the other three his blessing at the same time, in practice to kill Kenna using the same fire spell Dominic used on him; the latter had been planning to use it anyway to destroy Hex's canon.
Close to how he had initially planned on following up Kenna's death by suffocating the other three using the same failed attempt at immolation with former weapons master Duncan, he adds on the opportunity of putting Trystan in a trance to replace his minions, with them unable to object. Before this can happen, however, Bartel tries to get mesmerized by the damage a second time to prevent the escaped Dominic from directly interfering with him killing Rose with a dagger, being able to base his decisions on the RP's amount of diamond/flame points. Since he had already stabbed Margaret to death with the same dagger, it's possible to use fire magic to repel him if there's enough left, since he was already in a trance at that point. If you don't, Dominic eventually finds him and wounds him with an axe and burns him to ashes, killing him.
He shows up in Books 2 and 3 in the series while trapped in the spirit realm, taunting Dominic via apparition about how there's rumors of a genocide among the Technocrats (though he refers to it simply as "destroying everything"), saying that he will be the first to inform everyone that Luther sails back from the Iron Empire as soon as winter is coming for the purpose of replacing Helene with a knight as the former's guard as a "gift", with the knight having wanted to compliment Margaret Blake's hard work as a cook and upgrading her spatula to a nine-iron flat hanging hook, allowing her to escape with a warranty on something valued from the previous year, as it had become unheard of. However, since he had always wanted the plan to be wrongly attributed to Dom himself, the knight is inevitably going to chase after Dom and force him to chew his way through the crawlspace where the hooks came from under threat of spreading them (the hooks) throughout the kingdom, leading to wide scale breaking and entering and Luther not being able to broker deals with enemies, who will literally swallow him and everyone else whole all the way into the same spirit realm.
What would've led to a cycle of apparitions in indentured servitude sharing the same planned-out genocides over and over, the only reason he doesn't succeed is because Luther had ratted him out to his enemies earlier on and Dominic kept it a secret, just getting rid of the apparition without telling him what had happened.
Mitigating factors? Evil Is Cool or Freudian Excuse?
Originally it was kind of ambiguous if him killing Margaret was a Mercy Kill, since Dom is Like a Son to Margaret and he stresses some importance on being friendly to Marco where he can't be friendly elsewhere and where the most likely place for Margaret to settle/retire should be, regardless of him personally leading her there. However, given he decidedly brags about his destruction before and after that point, it's all but stated that he was just trying to cover his own ass by lifting up Marco's quota that would have sprung up from not being able to arrest Dominic in time, without risking the monk reappearing at the monastery or coming anywhere near him, stalling his own time to wait for the broken-out monk to (possibly) leave so he can he still burn the rubble/small resources used for reconstruction (and he gives up on that anyway). He directly begs Dominic later on, even though Trystan had gone away, not even trying to go after her, so there's likely some connection (given he had to kill Rose abruptly instead of using her as a Human Shield).
He is admittedly far from dumb, but his Smug Snake nature is more pronounced through his taunts and his brief feelings of bliss, the latter of which always gets slowed down by anything directly related to the monks.
Heinous standard met?
Definitely. The community surrounding Choice is kinda small but he's been cited as the most evil antagonist even with the existence of Marco and others. For whatever it's worth, Marco at least stays far away from any motivation to kill any of his x-in-commands and keeps whatever aids he can to the kingdoms for very short periods of time, mostly out of Pragmatic Villainy, but there has been at least one ocassion where he's created larger groups of them. Bartel isn't even a major antagonist, but we get rapid-fire RP's for Kenna and whoever else goes up against him, and it's clear how much he dehumanizes literally everybody around him.
Verdict?
Easy keep.
Edited by Coachpill on Sep 29th 2023 at 1:36:42 PM
Your goateed philistine is sashaying towards us. | 🧱
to Pyrock and Blizzrock, Kernal Goyolk, Lucas Drexler, Nora Melchiorri, the Parasite, Chakal, Bull, General Orlov, DEVA Officials, Norbert Blatkiewicz, Marty Jay Williams, Robin Locksley, Azshara, The Radiance, Rafael Mateos, Dragon King, Muck, Cyrus, Nobu, Dimitri Rascalov, Hans Nemesis, Ryder, Doctor Facilier, Soul Curator, Queen Dagmar, Valak, Sokar, Spidergland, Alberto Fussar and Leviticus Cornwall.
Abstain on Nikolai Janosch due to Sky's points, but I feel their should be more discussion of them, as they do sound pretty bad.
Edit: Leaning to
to Bartel Gremley, but could you elaborate a bit more on the heinous standard?
Edited by MGD107 on Sep 29th 2023 at 11:13:17 AM
Yes to Doctor Facilier, Soul Curator, Queen Dagmar, Valak, Sokar, Spidergland, Alberto Fussar and Leviticus Cornwall.
No to Chris. While vile, he doesn’t do enough and fails the standard to The Man.
“Get Snuck-Up On.”Alright, hello everyone! I’ve been thinking of this for a while but was hesitate to really talk about it due to he was rejected a few years ago on the older threads, although after some rewatching I want to at least see if anyone was interested. I was wondering if anyone is cool opening a rediscussion for Eli Mills from Jurassic Park. I know his most recent rejection was about 2021 I’m pretty sure. But after going through the movies and also watching Camp Cretaceous, which from what I’ve seen weren’t brought up in relation for him, I think there is some more evidence for the candidate that could pass. I know he was discussed a while ago and people were confident, but I’m wondering, only if it is okay with all of you guys if we can rediscuss him and for me to make another EP. If you guys think he doesn’t count I won’t make it. I just wanna see what’s everyone thinks first and foremost.
(x7) Alright, to summarize, he...
- kills commanders
- tried to form an elaborate plan to trick the five kingdoms into killing each other/the offspring doing the same in perpetuity, using the apparitions of every single person killed by the enemies to do so for the next generation (gaslighting + Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil + Eaten Alive, very slowly and painfully, and Bartel doesn't have the excuse of being Always Chaotic Evil)
- burned down a monastery and tried to do it again—think Frollo but with monks, who he's implied to be prejudiced against
- tries to enslave the protagonists
- tries destroying Hex's can(n)on after testing it by immolating an innocent soldier just so he can redirect the bounty on her (since she had the canon locked away) to other people in the kingdom while getting to torture her to extremes
- eats a pet hawk
- lynches the heroes as part of his grand plan leading up to more and more extreme punishments
- petty sadism on the side
Anyway,
to hearing about Eli Mills.
@Mermaid: I won't stop you from proposing Eli, but imo he's still fully out-heinoused by Dodgson in Dominion, where he literally tries to destroy the entire world's wheat supply and doom the lives of billions for profits. Just by doing that he blows every other villain out of the water.
It's Spooky Month!I'm fine with an EP for Mills if we really want but like, doesn't Dodgson pretty firmly blow the heinous standard to hell and back too much for Mills to land? When we reach the point that the trilogy's final villain, also a Corrupt Corporate Executive, literally aims to wipe out a huge chunk of the world's food supply I'm unsure Mills' "use dinos as weapons of war" holds up to that.
'd by
but point stands
Edited by Ravok on Sep 29th 2023 at 12:50:36 PM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!
to Dimitri, Blair Witch, Hans, Facilier, Soul Curator, Dagmar, Sokar, Spidergland, and the Red Dead 2 duo.
Feeling a little defeated, since I made an EP for Dimitri not long ago and got completely rejected. Maybe I'm bad at making these proposals. Of course, I acknowledge that the other EP was more in-depth than mine was.
That said, got another one today.
What is the work?
Super Robot Wars Judgment, the last entry of the Super Robot Wars series for the GBA. As with other SRW games, the plot is a joining of most or all of the native plots from the mecha series that each game comprises. The original (not from a licensed series) part of the plot concerns the Fury, a race of Human Aliens who seeded life on Earth billions of years ago, then placed themselves into stasis to wait for when the Earth would become fully inhabitable. The mothership of the Fury eventually became the moon as it accumulated space debris over the eons. This game already has a CM in Jua-Mu Dalby, one of the Fury. Let's see if his boss can also be on the list.
Who is the candidate?
Gu-Landon Goetz, the highest ranking Knight of the Fury, the leader of the Fury's military, and the final boss of the game. It was he who ordered the Fury invasion of Earth to wipe humanity out and make the Earth into the new Fury homeworld. He has enough political power to overrule the wishes of the rightful ruler of the Fury, the princess Shana-Mia Eterna Fura, who is far more peaceful and desires co-existence with the existing Earthlings. As the leader of the Fury, he is ultimately responsible for all the damage the Fury does, with all their atrocities, including by existing CM Jua-Mu, coming from Gu-Landon's command.
In the game's final level, Gu-Landon, in the heart of Fury mothership, is cornered by the good guys, and it is here that his most heinous act takes place. In case anyone thought he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only wants to secure a new home for the Fury, he completely proves that false when he, upon realizing that he's losing, plugs his mecha, the Zui-Gadin, into the ship's main power supply to power it up and transform it into its second form. Note that most of his race is in stasis aboard that ship, and that by diverting the ship's power into the Zui-Gadin, it would kill all those people in stasis. Ultimately his efforts are for naught, as even with his power-up, he is struck down by the heroes before the Fury lose their lives, marking the end of the conflict between Earth and the Fury.
Mitigating factors?
No, there's nothing to suggest his character goes deeper than "megalomaniacal warlord". He disregards the wishes of his princess, he looks down on the Earthlings with the belief that the Fury should be as gods to Earthlings, and when the chips are down, he shows that he values his own pride and ego over the lives of his own race.
Heinousness
One of the series featured in Judgment is Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, so Gu-Landon has to compete with other characters who aim to commit genocide, like Muruta Azrael and Patrick Zala, and Rau Le Creuset who is an Omnicidal Maniac, but on top of directly enabling another CM in Jua-Mu, Gu-Landon is unique in attempting to commit the act of directly genociding his own race for the sole purpose of beating the Earthlings in a fight, and he doesn't even have a Freudian Excuse like Rau for wanting everyone dead. Gu-Landon himself goes crazy and enters Omnicidal Mania in the final battle, ranting and raving that he'll destroy all life, Earthlings and Fury included. While it may be a side effect of juicing-up his machine too much, which can destabilize his mind, it wasn't anybody other than him who put himself into that state to begin with, so it doesn't decrease his moral agency.
Verdict
Well, I haven't had any luck with this kind of posts so far, but I'm still trying.
I also wanted to ask, under Harry Potter, why does Peter Pettigrew only make it in the Films section, and not the Literature section? From what I saw in his entry, everything there should also apply to his original book version, shouldn't it?
Also I'm taking Power Rangers Cosmic Fury. So one I think may finally keep if we get enough.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
