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
We can’t play by a “I don’t feel like following the rules” attitude, as has been said enough times now…
The Ultimate Lifeform
@Libraryseraph, Apologies! I swore one person could have 4 individual EP's active, such as when I proposed two duos for the first 4 City of Heroes CM's. Is it because they're all from the same work that nobody minded?
"Us weirdos have to stick together!"
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Xao
Neeku,besides the fact that's not how the rules work, or that you can just copy and paste the EP so you can repost it tomorrow when your Godzilla proposal runs out, your proposals are just really sloppily written, I can barely tell what you're writing
REALITY IS AN ILLUSION, THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM, BUY GOLD BYEEEE! | She/Her
Goku Black
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
It's three works but five character eps.
The Moron
There's theoretically no limit to the number of characters a person can propose during their three day period, but it's a maximum of three works.
Where'd you get the character limit from? We've never said that anywhere.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Nov 21st 2023 at 10:39:44 AM
Showtime!
I think there's kind of an unspoken limit? Like using the three works limit to shove ten eps out because seven are from the same thing feels like it's breaking the spirit of the rule if not the letter
Goku Black
I uh swear I saw someone propose that rule out of fairness.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Okay, so are you guys gonna look at Frenic or do I have to wait until next week? Because one of you told me that I would need to wait for results at this Sunday, so I don’t know what is happening, did I do something inappropriate, did I break the rules somehow, did I waste your time, someone needs to break the mystery and tell me straight?
The Moron
We’ve said this repeatedly - the rules are all spelled out at the top of the page. Please, just read them
Neeku, I've already told you when you can propose someone again, please just read the rules listed
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: Lord Livius Erimond is a smug, arrogant high-ranking member of the Venatori and servant of the Elder One, dedicated to having the Tevinter Imperium conquer Thedas. After his master gave the Grey Wardens of Orlais a false Calling, Erimond went to Warden-Commander Clarel and offered her a Blood Magic ritual of having them their mages sacrifice their other members in order to summon a demon army to kill the Old Gods and prevent any future Blight. In truth, the ritual instead enslaved the mages as well, with Erimond using the Wardens to raise a demon army for the Elder One to slaughter any who stand in his way. After the Inquisitor begins to reason with Clarel, Erimond then summons a dragon to kill them and their forces.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
After Corypheus?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM DraftsYep, Corypheus is the Big Bad and appears before him
REALITY IS AN ILLUSION, THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM, BUY GOLD BYEEEE! | She/Her
to Xao Gon.
On an unrelated note, I finished Like A Dragon Gaiden. I'll lead discussion on the 23rd. If anyone has questions, feel free to DM me.
Lies and Violence!
Yes to Xao.
Okay, here's one I'm not 100% on, but looking everything over, I think he makes it.
What's the work?
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the red-headed stepchild of the MCU, and apparently was finally confirmed as non-canon. And then proved to be ten times better than all the Disney+ shows, but whatever.
Anyways, I decided to take another look at two major villains. The first? The Greater-Scope Villain and Final Boss of season 6. To give a basic summary: Coulson, the resurrected leader of a group of SHIELD agents trying to keep the world from falling apart after The Winter Soldier took away their entire infrastructure, has died again, for realsies this time.
...And then this space marauder, by the name of Sarge, appears on Earth, and he looks exactly like Coulson. Sarge is hunting a demon by the name of Izel who has destroyed entire planets, but the truth is a little more complicated than he thinks.
Who is Pachakutiq?
A fear demon from another dimension, whose inhabitants have no concept of emotion, death, or form. Pachakutiq long desired to escape from this world into one where his people could claim real bodies. To accomplish this, he instructed his lover, Izel, to escape into our world and find three Monoliths—mysterious magical stones from their dimension—that could be used to create a physical form for him, before then opening a portal for their people to invade through.
This proved a little difficult. The Monoliths had been taken offworld, so Izel, upon arriving at our world, took to the stars in search of them. Pachakutiq, meanwhile, grew impatient as he waited for her, eventually coming to suspect her of trying to usurp his "glory" by being the sole architect of their people's return. Fortunately, another way to escape soon appeared. Long story short, SHIELD comes upon the Monoliths in the present and Coulson interacts with them. The combined powers of the Monoliths create a clone of Coulson, send it back in time, and transport it into the fear dimension, where Pachaqukiq possesses it to enter our world. However, Coulson's memories still remained within the clone, and Pachakutiq's own mind was scrambled. The resulting being, Sarge, only had vague recollections of hating Izel and having a family, concluding that she must have killed the latter and setting off on a centuries-long hunt.
Izel, in the midst of all this, continued Pachakutiq's plan. She created a race of crystal-bat monsters, the Shrike, and unleashed them all throughout the galaxy, annihilating entire planets. The Shrike possess living beings, clawing their way down the throats of billions to kill them and turn them into zombies, the hosts' minds dead and gone so that, when Izel's people possess their bodies, they will not have as much trouble as Pachakutiq did with Coulson. Meanwhile, as Sarge hunts Izel, the remnants of Pachakutiq's personality drive him to ruthless extremes. Upon coming to Earth when Izel returns to the planet, Sarge tries to kill several of his followers when they become an inconvenience, and nearly sets off an atom bomb near a populated city in order to catch Izel in the blast.
That fails, of course, and Izel kills Sarge—though, being an immortal fear demon and all, he comes back. The shock of the experience begins tearing down his mental barriers, allowing Coulson and Pachakutiq's individual personalities to begin reforming into distinct states. Coulson's personality is the primary one influencing Sarge until the penultimate episode, when his clashing memories begin driving him to extreme pain. One of the SHIELD agents, May, counsels him that the pain he's feeling is love for his old friends, something alien to him due to Pachakutiq's influence over the centuries, something he can embrace and control.
...And he decides to remove that pain, stabbing May as Pachakutiq takes full control. Izel proceeds to convince him that she stayed loyal by killing Sarge to help him take back control, and the two begin to summon a portal for their people to invade. Izel begins fantasizing about all the new experiences they can share with their people, but Pachakutiq's desires are a little more... messy.
He gets to expand on that desire a little when fighting the rest of SHIELD.
Because of reasons I'm too lazy to get into, May survives to sabotage the portal and kill Izel, freeing the Shrike hosts, with the others killing Pachakutiq a few seconds later. Oh, and Coulson comes back again as an alien robot.
Heinous enough?
Izel is responsible for destroying countless planets and zombifying billions of entities across the cosmos, and she directly states this was done on behalf of Pachakutiq. He may have not committed these acts, but he's still the one responsible for planning the entire operation.
Mitigating qualities?
When Izel reveals the truth of Sarge's origins, she frames their quest as a noble cause, stating that Pachakutiq merely sought to share the joys of physical form with the rest of their people. Similarly, she states that Pachakutiq is her true love, and believes that Sarge has only been chasing her because he's subconsciously "longing" for her. Sure enough, in their final confrontation before Pachakutiq retakes control, Sarge finds himself unable to kill Izel.
However, then Pachakutiq actually wakes up, and he's... not that. His very next act after stabbing May is to attack Izel, revealing that he's actually been hunting her because he believes she abandoned him in their world, and only spares her when she convinces him she stayed loyal—in this context, the previous hesitation to kill her when he was Sarge seems more likely to be him knowing that killing her would destroy the Shrike hosts, ruining his plans. Even then, he very quickly turns to threatening Izel when she wonders if there's still some of Coulson left inside of him, and though Izel posits that his antagonism towards her may be caused by some of those remnants, there's no strong evidence, with the rest of SHIELD concluding that any remaining bits of Coulson died when he stabbed May. Despite how much she rants about how devoted Pachakutiq is to her, he very clearly does not care about her. Even when she's killed, though it clearly shocks him, it's less "you killed the love of my life" and more "oh shit, that's a problem."
Likewise, the rest of his people? Izel waxes a lot of poetry on gifting them form, but Pachakutiq seems much more focused on the pain they'll be able to inflict on others—that's his sole contribution to Izel's ideas of what their people will gain from having bodies, and he's outright giddy over the prospect of having the spirits torture SHIELD, despite how much this would presumably harm them as well given his own experience. He makes two overtures to finding "a new home" and giving their people "new life", but the sadism is far more on display. Plus, there's this interesting exchange when he initially attacks Izel:
Which definitely makes it seem like he only sought to free their people for the prestige of such an accomplishment. They don't elaborate much more on this, so I could be wrong, but I genuinely can't think of what other "glory" he could be talking about. Maybe he's accusing her of abandoning the plan in order to be the only free member of their race, but given he's aware of everything Sarge knows, he should know she's been working on this for centuries, so that doesn't make much sense. Occam's razor, it's probably the "freeing their people" thing.
To be clear, none of this is explicitly spelled out, which is probably why he's never been brought up before. But reading between the lines? Izel is very clearly an Unreliable Narrator who overestimates how much her lover values her, and Pachakutiq seems far more concerned with raising his people so they can spread suffering than any altruistic reasons.
Verdict?
Unless there's something I interpreted horribly wrong? I'd say he's a keep.
Edited by EmeraldEmperor on Nov 22nd 2023 at 5:25:47 AM
Not the Eye
Pachakutiq
Sounds like anything potentialy reddeming is simply Izel giving him in universe Draco in Leather Pants.
Edited by EmperorGeode on Nov 21st 2023 at 12:21:38 PM
Goku Black
Pachakutiq
So first for Clark Gregg
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Showtime!
to Patchy
Pachakutiq (didn't even try to spell that, just copied and pasted it)
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Aside from the question of why Izel had to do the work instead of Pach, was it his idea to kill billions, and she just did the actual work? If so, I'll give a yes.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Lies and Violence!
Genuinely have no idea how Izel was able to escape, this season was not very good at explaining anything. But yes, it's made clear that Pachakutiq was the one who sent Izel out into the universe, and she states that creating the Shrike army was done "just as [he] imagined."
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to Pachakutiq. I just find him too ambiguous.
to evil Coulson. I
admit I thought that redeeming quality was genuine bit after some reflection yes to him
The Ultimate Lifeform
to Pachakutiq.
Edited by ForgoLight on Nov 21st 2023 at 12:59:18 PM
"Us weirdos have to stick together!"
Sure to Pachakutiq.
- Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, by Yoshikazu Takeuchi: The stalker known only as "Darling Rose" fixates on "saving" idol singer Mima Kirigoe from her increasingly adult-oriented career path by skinning her and wearing it as her biggest fan. To practice, he murders a little girl, skinning her leg to graft onto himself. Finding the flesh of the dead useless, Darling Rose captures, rapes and flays another idol alive before kidnapping Mima's assistant to lure in Mima and tries to kill them both.
For potholes ACW, stuff that applies to Me-Mania on Perfect Blue (Minus being The Dragon/an Unwitting Pawn to Rumi) applies to DR.
Edited by 43110 on Nov 21st 2023 at 4:21:17 AM
That's not how it works. You made three proposals, now you can't do another one until the voting periods for those three have ended
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?