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
Dr. Moreau
Okay, here's the three writeups for real this time!
- City of Heroes:
- Arakhn is the leader of the Nictus, and she shows herself to be one of the cruelest of them all. Seeking a new home base for her Nictus forces in the war with the other Kheldians opposed to her monstrous ways, Arakhn would come to Earth during the time of WWII, and make contact with the Axis powers. Arakhn would then craft a plan alongside the equally monstrous Requiem to subsume the entirety of Planet Earth with Nictus forces. Helping to overthrow the 5th Column in order to gain the resources of the newly formed Council, Arakhn would begin conducting horrific experiments on unwitting members of other villain groups, and even her own soldiers in order to create more warriors who bore the powers of a Nictus symbiote. Gathering up Shadow Seeds to summon her armies to Earth, Arakhn is thwarted by the heroes of Paragon City before later escaping, vowing to never stop her work until all life on Earth has been fully consumed by the Nictus.
- Requiem is the leader of the 5th Column, a Nazi Villain faction dedicated to world domination, and he proves himself to be a new low even amongst them. Originally starting as a mere lapdog of Benito Mussolini, the man who would become Requiem would soon be merged with a Nictus, and alongside Arakhn, begin to plot the usurpation of the entirety of Planet Earth with Nictus life forms, all the while waging war against the free world. Requiem would continue with his monstrous deeds even after the 5th Column was subsumed by the Council, up until Arakhn's plan was foiled by the heroes of Paragon City. Following this, Requiem abandoned Arakhn and set a plan of his own design into motion. Bringing loyal 5th Column soldiers with him back in time, Requiem made contact with Romulus Augustus of Cimerora, and began working alongside him to conquer the entirety of the timestream with Cimeroran Warriors enhanced by 5th Column science.
- Giovanna Scaldi was once a simple farmer's daughter in the 17th century until she discovered she possessed substantial psionic powers and evolved into something much worse. Growing bored with the life of a farm girl, Giovanna used her psychic powers to brainwash anyone she encountered into thinking that she was a wealthy duchess, purely so Giovanna could entertain herself with an extravagant lifestyle. Later deciding that this was not enough, Giovanna would supplement her psionic abilities with Dark Magic provided by a sorcerer named Uriel, magic which she soon put to use enslaving the entire population of Venice and forcing them to become her personal harem while committing other acts of debauchery purely for her own amusement. Later being stopped by a psychic church hero, Giovanna would have her soul put inside of a porcelain mask which would be lost to time, until her descendent Vanessa DeVore discovered it in modern day. Using the Rikti War to coax Vanessa into donning the mask, Giovanna overwhelmed Vanessa's mind with her own, and used Vanessa's rewritten personality as a cypher to once again indulge in her hedonistic depravity.
How do these look?
"Us weirdos have to stick together!"Where should they go in the tree?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM DraftsAll three before the Rikti War Zone Duo.
Exact order can be as follows:
- Giovanna
- Arakhn
- Requiem
- Nemesis
- Hro'Dohtz
- Mot
- Diabolique
Edited by ForgoLight on Oct 14th 2023 at 4:03:46 AM
"Us weirdos have to stick together!"Please add to the Drafts.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM DraftsAight Rahmat's writeup
- Suarto Rahmat is a cheerfully sadistic mercenary in on Ocelot's plan for global catastrophe. Raiding a Libyan general's compound to acquire a nuclear bomb, Rahmat has all the guards within slaughtered. After killing the General's wife, Rahmat holds his young son as a bargaining chip for the nuke, casually killing him when the general complies anyway. Having the nuke placed onto his ship, Rahmat has his boat travel to Russia to detonate it and trigger World War Three.
Now comes another Ben Kingsley possibility who plays a pretty good action villain in this film IMO.
What is the work?
Security (2017) is a 2017 action crime-thriller film directed by Alain Des Rochers led by Antonio Banderas in the lead role.
Eddie Deacon, an ex-special services veteran (Antonio Banderas), is down on his luck and desperate for work, and takes a job as a security guard at a run-down mall in a rough area of town. On his first night on the job, he opens the doors up to a distraught and desperate young girl who has escaped and fled from a massacre of the U.S. Marshal motorcade that was transporting her to testify as a trial witness. Hot on her heels is psychopathic hijacker, alongside his resourceful henchmen, who will stop at nothing to extract and eliminate their witness.
Our candidate is the film's Hans Gruber. And you'll see why...
Who is Charlie?
Charlie is the main antagonist of the 2017 action crime-thriller film Security. He is a gang leader who is after a young girl named Jamie. When Jamie's father, his accountant, tried to grass to the feds about Triple Six, Charlie had him killed. He and his men wiped out a U.S Marshals convoy that were escorting Jamie to testify in an organized crime trial. When he realizes that Jamie survived the attack and escaped to a nearby mall, Charlie leads his men to find and kill Jamie. When the security guards refuse to cooperate, Charlie to decides to lead a full-on assault on the mall in an attempt to kill everyone in the mall.
What does he do?
Not much is known about Charlie's past. However, when he was a child, his father put him on a train with 50 quid and abandoned him. When he became an adult, he became a leader of the Triple Six Gang. He and his gang controlled Cedar City and indulged in drug dealing and robberies, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of people in multiple towns. When one of their members tried to rat out on their crimes to the feds, the Triple Six killed him in front of his daughter.
The victim's daughter was then moved into protective custody and was eventually escorted by an FBI convoy as a witness to testify in an organized crime trial. Knowing about this, Charlie leads his men on an attack on the FBI cars at night, slaughtering all of the agents. However, Jamie was able to escape the shootout and find safety at the Ridgeside mall. When Charlie finds that Jamie escaped, Charlie has his men clean up the scene and leads them to the mall. He first approaches the mall disguising himself as Jamie's dad, trying to find his daughter after she apparently ran off. While initially successful in fooling the security guards, Eddie is suspicious and questions Charlie on Jamie's characteristics, before Jamie recognizes Charlie as the gang leader and runs away. Charlie then offers the security team $1.25 million to give him the girl and to not tell anyone about what really happened.
When that doesn't work, Charlie decides to lead an assault on the mall. He then goes back to his men and plans a raid on the mall, stationing snipers overlooking the mall, as well as a perimeter of shooters around the parking lot to massacre any cops who arrive, while also disabling the cars to make sure anyone in the building can't escape. He then has his men attempt to break in by driving in a van. However, the guards set the van on fire with a flaming couch. The driver runs out on fire, which prompts Charlie to order him shot dead and to shoot at the guards on the roof. He then has his men put out the fire and take out the corpse.
He and his henchmen then enter the building and station up in the security office. He then radios to his men to commence "scorched Earth", in which no one in the mall should be left alive by the time they finish the job. He then finds a toycar with a security camera that Jamie is watching him from. He it brings to his office and radios to Eddie, who tells Charlie to back off. Charlie then has Eddie listen to the announcement he makes to his henchmen. He tells his men that because of initally losing the girl at the FBI motorcade raid, if they find and kill the girl in the mall, they each get an extra $100,000. However, if they fail, they will be hunted down and killed, alongside their friends, families, and even pets.
When a county sheriff comes near the mall, Charlie orders his men to hold off on what they are doing. When one of the security guards attempts to communicate to the sheriff about the danger, Charlie has him shot dead. He then has his men kill anyone in the Food Court, succeeding in killing Ruby, which devastates Vance, whom are both guards. However, his men are then killed by Eddie, which Charlie sees. When the guards and Jamie are able to block his men off, Charlie gets annoyed and decides to intervene. He then radios Eddie and threatens him again to hand over Jamie.
When Eddie refuses, Charlie has his men tear down the steel blockade and start shooting. However, Vance is able to hold them off for a while, in which he kills several mercenaries by shooting them and setting them on fire with homemade bombs. However, while some of his men are being slaughtered, Charlie is just watching peacefully while seemingly listening to music. He then has some of his men pose as police officers in order to lure the girls out. However, before the girl arrives, Eddie notices the Triple Six logo on the officers necks, which prompts him to warn Jamie and Mason, the latter of which is another guard. However, Mason is then shot and killed by Charlie's posed agents.
Overhearing the conversation between Jamie & Eddie, Charlie goes looking for Jamie. When he briefly sees her, he starts shooting at her to no avail as she hides again. He then attempts manipulate Jamie into giving herself up by using his backstory to paint himself as a sympathetic person, and promising to not kill her if she doesn't testify, and instead take her somewhere safe where can start a new life and "be (her) own boss", and that he would help her. However, when that doesn't work, Charlie finds and takes her and holds her at gunpoint before Eddie arrives. Before attempting to kill Jamie, he taunts Eddie about his decision and attempts to kill him at gunpoint. Fortunately, Jamie tases him and escapes his hold so Eddie can shoot him in the head and finally kill him for good.
Any redeeming qualities? Freudian Excuse?
None for him. Charlie is ruthless & unusually calm man who has no remorse over killing people, and is willing to slaughter everyone in the mall just to find Jamie. He doesn't care about his men, as not only is he willing to have them, their family, friends, and pets killed for failure, but when they are slaughtered by the security guards, he just watches.
While he does mention that his father abandoned him as a child, this no where near an excuse for his actions. Even then, he could've possibly made it up in order to make himself seem affable to Jamie in order to lure her out, since Charlie's past is not shown onscreen. And while he pretends that he's willing to not kill Jamie, he immediately subverts when he shoots at her whenever he can and drags her out of her hiding place to kill her while taunting Eddie.
Are they bad enough?
I think Charlie crosses the bar. Even before the film, he and his gang were very feared in Cedar City and indulged in drug dealing and robberies, which resulted in many deaths in at least two towns. When one of their members tried to rat out on their crimes to the feds, the Triple Six killed him in front of his daughter. In the movie, he slaughters an entire FBI convoy and attempts to lead a full on deadly-assault on the mall in order to kill everyone just to find and kill Jamie, resulting in the deaths of multiple security guards and most of his men. Let's also not forget the fact that he threatens the lives of his henchmen, their friends, families, and pets if they don't succeed.
Final verdict?
I think I'd give him a good .
Edited by JoeBertInc on Oct 14th 2023 at 7:32:35 AM
Charlie
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Sure to Charlie. For an action-crime film instead of a pure action one, he probably does enough.
I'll write up Marsh hopefully tomorrow; first I gotta do my thing with the other writeups. (Also, I changed mercenary to Arms Dealer for Rahmat.)
Edited by ACW on Oct 14th 2023 at 7:43:06 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM DraftsI've been checking various users for activity and one particular user, Riley1sCool has not been seen since last month. Because of this, unless he states otherwise, both My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen are currently up for grabs for those wanting to do entries on them.
MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB DatesRiley is still an active member and those are ongoing. Him not being here doesn't mean theyr'e free game. But I'll scrawl my name by them just to ensure he doesn't miss them
Said it on MB but that's not how that works. We can't just say "well I haven't seen (X) around for a very short while so this thing they had reserved is now up for grabs, so says I." I can confirm Riley1sCool is still around and while they are just lurking at this time, they still have plans to cover those works when the time comes.
Edited by Ravok on Oct 14th 2023 at 6:47:47 AM
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.Unfortunately, I have to admit, I kinda got antsy about it because while I am normally tolerating of such small periods of absence, due to recent events I shall not discuss, I jumped the gun after not seeing any forum or wiki activity from them for a month. I apologize for this issue.
MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB DatesYes, like I have said on MB, I may be less active but I will be keeping my reservations. Please do not attempt to remove them.
Following up on this - I'm not completely offline, but away from home (and on a different continent) until next weekend, and internet access is very limited. I'll try to get a Deva draft write-up done in that time, but would like to re-watch a couple of scenes to be sure I get it right.
Okay, if people thought they were done with the Street Fighter games, how about one from early in the franchise and a non-canon vision of the then-future at that. This was also something I've talked with Ravok on.
Now, we are not looking at the Japanese version of the Big Bad who is known there as Dr. Jose, we are going to look his counterpart in the English version, Dr. Troy who had been one of Ken's buddies at Bargham University who worked with him to create Cyboplasm that empowered people with just a fairly small portion, having been working together for 25 years. One day, the Cyboplasm was stolen, and Troy was murdered at the scene of the theft which sends Ken to equip himself with a bionic suit and track down the killer.
However, this was a lie.
As Ken follows Troy's tracks across the world while not knowing he is alive, Troy gets bothered by his former colleague's pursuit and provides some insincere aid by telling him where the Flip Shield Capsule is so he can try and force him into becoming his partner by inflicting pain on him. Troy also revealed his plans to control the entire galaxy through the Cyboplasm. When Ken refuses, Troy mutates himself into a monster twice in an attempt to kill him but gets killed instead. However, this did not stop the Cyboplasm Infestation on earth from turning into a worldwide plague that Ken is called back to help stop.
Troy not only lusted for power; he also was very sadistic in exposing his victims to massive amounts of Cyboplasm so that they find themselves wreathing in pain as they become mindless superbeings. There is also zero indication his turn to evil was a result of an overdose, so I think it is safe to say he has agency.
While the manual does mention Ken growing up in a world of violence, we are not given any detail on how bad the violence was and Troy was the only villain to appear in the game, giving him a lot less competition in the heinous standard.
Troy sets the game's standards as he trekked across several worlds to infest them with Cyboplasm so his victims go through a painful process of becoming mindless superbeings all with sadistic glee. As Ken gets closer, he noted something was crawling within his body and finds out that he too was a victim of this pain. Troy intends to rule over the galaxy with the use of the Cyboplasm on an untold number of victims. Even if Ken did manage to kill him, it did not stop the Cyboplasm infestation on earth from evolving into a plague.
To give more weight to the Cyboplasm turning victims into mindless beasts, there is zero indication of it being reversible after their transformation.
Verdict
Will lean yes.
IPP Wick Check created.Troy. Well... That was a thing.
MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB DatesTroy
Wassup homie? Nothin' much.I want to do a proposal, however said proposal involves discussion of potentially triggering subject matter (implied rape of a child). Should I put a content warning?
Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?Yeah, this thread has dealt with much worse before, so yeah. Give us the warning in case.
MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB DatesI come bearing a proposal from one Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass. Namely the villain of one particularly grim (which is saying something for this game) sidequest, Mr. Cat. Content Warning: This proposal is spoilered due to it's potentially triggering subject matter involving child rape.
Probably would just have to write them up ourselves.
Edited by AustinDR on Oct 14th 2023 at 4:29:42 AM