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
Messenger from another dimension.
Got a candidate! Another from Gliniarze ("Cops"), spiritual successor to W11.
The episode is called Bez Namysłu ("Without a Second Thought") is that a female cop Łucja Wilk gets kidnapped. Other cops learn it's ransom. Soon we learn that they have to deal with a dangerous Polish-Ukrainian human trafficking gang.
Who is Radosław Klamra nicknamed "Kamaz"?
Leader of the gang. Or at least Polish part of the gang. He forces women into prostitution and later he kidnaps them and drives them across the border where he sells them into slavery. We see brutal conditions those women are in. They are all afraid and they lost their mind when police finds them. Łucja actually got some members of the gang arrested and injured Kamaz. So he seeks vengeance. He hired a kidnapper to kidnap her and later torture her, and ransom her. When Łucja gets rescued, we learn she is in critical condition (she dies in later episode). When Olgierd (one of lead cops) and others discover Kamaz hideout and see him and kidnapper and kidnapper reveals he raped Łucja and they both laugh sadistically. Olgierd loses his mind and shoots the kidnapper dead and later keeps shooting even after latter is dead, while Kamaz tries to escape only to trip, and get handcuffed and arrested. Last minutes of the episode, it's revealed Łucja's condition is still critical, while Kamaz reveals how Olgierd shot the kidnapper dead after learning he raped Łucja. Which causes Olgierd to lose his carreer. Narrator reveals Kamaz got life imprisonemnt.
Heinous?
I think so. He is one of few human traffickers. There is one more one, but I will have to rewatch episode before I EP him. We have few serial killrs (one is up) and a serial pedophile (also up) and terrorist. We have a man who raped and murdered 12 year old girl (huge Hate Sink but only victim sadly so he can't count unfortunately). A man who murdered his own 2 year old son since his fiance cheated on him. Still, considering there aren't that many human traffickers, I think Kamaz makes it. Plus, ordering the kidnapping of a female cop just cause she injured him and putting her through torture adds to his crimes.
Verdict?
I think yes.
Edited by emperors on Jan 9th 2024 at 5:05:43 AM
Welcome to the world of greatest media!
Not the Eye
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to Palmer, Mr. Perfectly Trustworty and Friendly and Kamaz
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to Kaya. Thought nonetheles, welcome back Echidna.
Switch abstain to Hateful
to Mr. Friendly and Kamaz.
to Kaya.
Abstain on the Hateful Star.
Here are my writeups.
- Lantern Prime
- Unicron is the Avatar of Rage and enemy of the Cybertronians. Once an observer of stars and planets alongside his sister Primus, Unicron became enraged at the existence of organic creatures and tries to destroy them before being sealed into a moon by Primus. Eventually regaining his power, Unicron began to glass numerous planets to eradicate all life on them. Using his brother Ophidian as a Living Battery, Unicron attacked Mogo with the intent of destroying him, killing many Green Lanterns with Ophidian's constructs as they defend Mogo. Upon seeing his siblings Ion and Primus again, Unicron attacks them and declares his intent to imprison them within himself and use their power in his attempt to eradicate all life.
- "Cybertron:' Megatron is the vicious leader of the Decepticons. Intending to end the war between the Decepticons and Autobots, Megatron launches a giant missile at his home planet, killing every Cybertronian while leaving Optimus Prime alive to watch it happen.
No to the Hateful and Kaya. Abstaining on Palmer and Friendly.
Hateful. Planetary And I Must Scream is even worse than just generic planet scale death, especially when Sol is bringing those who committed suicide back to life.
Kaya
Abstain Mr Friendly
Edited by Snowy66 on Jan 9th 2024 at 2:15:14 AM
Showtime!
Abstain on Mr Friendly
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
to Mr. Friendly abstain on Kamaz
Gentle Laborer
Kamaz
Abstaining on Palmer and Friendly.
Alright... I'm reinforcing my on Kaya. Echidna, I've been looking more into her character and it appears that you've edited her Near Pure Evil article, which explains all of her mitigating qualities—it's painfully clear now that her having A-Cup Angst is not the only thing preventing her from being Played for Drama, the game itself plays its comedic BGM during her downfall to specifically clarify that she's being Played for Laughs. You briefly mentioned her having a "funny" defeat but you really, really should have included all of the details, especially considering the fact that you're familiar with said details.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Now I wonder about the other keepers.
Kamaz...if human trafficking is rare, sure.
Weak yes to Friendly as well.
Edited by ACW on Jan 9th 2024 at 5:37:52 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
You are completely correct on that part Cr0w. But yeah I really should have mentioned all of those comedy parts to her in the EP in that discussion for a proper judgment if anything. I didn't do it on purpose if I am being honest with myself regardless. Even then I did state I was hesitant about her and even before doing it I only did it for a proper conclusion on the thread. As I said at least there's that for a verdict. Oh well, at least this is something I should keep in mind as it goes on. I would like to move on for her if that is alright with anyone.
Edited by Echidna on Jan 9th 2024 at 5:48:02 AM
Showtime!
I genuinely don't see how you could remember that on one wiki and not on a proposal on this one, to be honest.
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
Anyway don't want this to drag on for too long just to be respectful and I just got back so don't want to make myself look bad with the mistake I made even if it is big. Now that is out of the way Friendly and Kamaz.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
I wasn't at the full extent for the loyalty part and I didn't leave it out if anything. I still have some flaws that I am trying to take note of regardless.
Edited by Echidna on Jan 9th 2024 at 6:18:39 AM
Showtime!
I don't want to be harsh, but I don't think this is out of the way. You've left a blatant mitigating factor you were aware of out of your first ep back after getting released from a Long Term ban. I think this requires more discussion.
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
Reviewing the talk I will say that if an effort post was knowingly untruthful we do need to discuss why that happened.
Kaya
Abstain on Hateful.
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
Kaya. I sincerely hope this does not go very badly.
Edited by Siegfried1337 on Jan 9th 2024 at 3:18:19 AM
MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB Dates
- The Stranger Beside Me: Chris Gallagher first appearing to be a charming and friendly man, turns out to be a Serial Rapist, years prior to the start of the film he molested his child sister, Dana, leaving her traumatized for years from this experience. Chris, upon marrying Jennifer, eventually shows his true colors being a verbally and physically abusive husband. Chris begins stalking Gina Colbert, shortly afterward breaking into her house and raping her at gunpoint. On the day of his baby daughter's delivery, Chris ditches Jennifer in the hospital to rape another woman. Jennifer, upon finding out that the man she married is a rapist, calls the police after he breaks into another woman's house, attempting to rape her. Being found guilty of four rapes, intending to make his last target his fifth.
....Phenomenal
for Palmer, Kamaz, and Friendly.
Hateful and Kaya.
Insert title here
Abstain on The Hateful.
for Kaya after reading the whole discussion.
for Palmer. I feel the lyrics aren't enough to establish a personality. It's more about what she did than what kind of person she is.
Unsure about Mr. Friendly. A short glance at the page shows that there are plenty of horrible people yet he has less resources than many of them and is far "younger". Being torn between an upvote and an Abstain, right now. Have to think about it a bit longer.
for Kamaz.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
to Kaya, and I really hope we don’t have to pull yet another mass-removal after G, but this does give me concerns about all the other EPs and how honest they were. An honest mistake is one thing, but knowingly leaving something out does not leave me feeling confident. I can vouch for the Creepy Gym Coach from The Karaoke qualifying, at least.
Edited by MasterN on Jan 9th 2024 at 4:09:01 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
Sharing my thoughts as well, I did PM Echidna about this, but his response ultimately left me dissatisfied since he hasn't convinced me that he is not going back to his old ways. It's time we reviewed both his future and past effortposts so that we can determine if we have a G-Editor situation.
The Ultimate Lifeform
As someone who once made a mistake in an older Star Trek Online EP that I corrected and ultimately got the candidate cut, I promise I have been doing my best to be honest with any candidates I bring up! Also the Kordax writeup is currently in progress.
for Kamaz.
Edited by ForgoLight on Jan 9th 2024 at 4:22:23 AM
"Us weirdos have to stick together!"
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Kordax get enough votes? I remember there being some agency concerns.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
What's the work?
Bad Magic is the latest entry in the Skulduggery Pleasant novel series, a graphic novel side story focusing on one of the misadventures of the titular skeleton detective and his partner, Valkyrie Cain.
The comic specifically focuses on the pair investigating the small town of Termoncara, the murder capital of Ireland. To make a long story short, two boys were murdered twenty years ago. The townspeople blamed a homeless Romanian man and beat him to death in the streets... only for it to be revealed that the boys' own father committed the crime. The guilty townsfolk covered things up, but, unfortunately for them, there happened to be a family of powerful psychics in the area. An as of yet unrevealed mastermind used the psychic energy this family generated to begin weaving a mental web around the whole town, manifesting their collective guilt into monsters. The first of them?
Who is Mr. Friendly?
A demonic-looking jester, Mr. Friendly happily embraced the murderous role that comes with being the living embodiment of a town's guilt—or, more specifically, their refusal to accept blame in favor of paranoia towards anyone who may be different from them. Termoncara is a "traditional" town, so Mr. Friendly leads his fellow monsters in murdering anyone who the townsfolk "dislike, fear, or fundamentally disagree with." Racist, homophobic, and political attacks skyrocketed, as did the number of "strange and horrific deaths." The townsfolk obviously don't understand what's happening, where these monsters are coming from. So Mr. Friendly approaches them and gives them his own take on these happenings, positioning himself as a benevolent creature who would protect them from the monsters—notably by having them annually sacrifice strangers to keep the malevolent beasts at bay. For two decades this went on... until Mr. Friendly grew bored.
Encouraged by the aforementioned anonymous mastermind, Mr. Friendly began to harvest enough psychic energy that he could possess the body of a young teenager named Jamie, part of the aforementioned family of fortune tellers. And how does one do that, you may be asking? Why, through more murder, of course! And psychological torture. As he does with practically everyone in town, Mr. Friendly appears to Jamie as a magical "friend", trying to give him advice and pretending to protect him from the other monsters. However, his advice almost always backfired—as Jamie puts it, "It was all about hurting myself, or hurting other people." Later on, Jamie is seemingly rejected by his crush, a kid named Ethan—really he's just nervous and is taking too long to respond to the text asking him out. Mr. Friendly "consoles" Jamie and, claiming that he wants to get back at Ethan on his behalf, kills Ethan—implicitly by ripping out his heart. For over a month, Jamie is the prime suspect for this murder, with his entire school hating him for it.
This is about the time Skulduggery and Valkyrie begin investigating. Mr. Friendly sends four townsfolk after the pair, as well as to kill an ex-cop who has files—many, many, many files—on all the murders that have been happening. When they fail to beat Skulduggery and Valkyrie, he invisibly kills the four to keep them from talking, then riles up the entire town by claiming the two are black magic users and Satan-worshippers and other crap like that. He's kept them safe from the monsters all these years, hasn't he? He's trustworthy!
Eh... no. Once Mr. Friendly possesses Jamie, he intends to murder the whole town to harvest enough psychic energy to make his hold over the kid permanent. When Skulduggery and Valkyrie step in, Mr. Friendly orders his monsters to begin the slaughter while he takes Jamie. However, Jamie turns out to be a tad too strong-willed, while Valkyrie and Skulduggery are uber-overpowered. With the two distracted protecting the adults of the town, he abandons Jamie for his cousin and heads to a school dance, intending to murder the dozens of teenagers oblivious to all the paranormal stuff that's been going on in order to get the energy he needs.
Fortunately for everyone else, he's incapable of moving past the psychic web over the town until he completes his massacre. The heroes lure Mr. Friendly to the border of the web and push him out, expelling him from the human body he's possessing so Valkyrie can blast him to oblivion.
Mitigating factors?
The big thing, obviously, is that he's the living manifestation of a town's "collective guilt and trauma," their "dark imagination made flesh." With that said, he goes way above and beyond what that should entail. As Skulduggery explains the situation:
Though he initially follows his primal instincts with glee, Mr. Friendly quickly switches to pursuing his own agenda. Killing everyone different? Nope, he'll kill everyone period. This is soon followed up by Mr. Friendly telling Jamie that his pain and "self-pity" was what drove him to murder Ethan, but Jamie rightfully calls out the demon's lies; he may have been hurting, but he didn't want Ethan dead or even harmed. Mr. Friendly is no longer some harbinger of doom, carrying out the subconscious violent desires of the townsfolks. He is his own being who wants to wander the world and be "unstoppable", and is willing to kill anyone to see this through.
Plus, the weird psychic guilt thing also manifested all the ghosts of the monsters' victims into a weird spirit squid underground that's benevolent and helps fight Mr. Friendly's minions, so... uh... make of that what you will.
Heinous enough?
As I said in the cleanup thread, the standard is high. There are many major villains who want to start World War 3 with the purpose of oppressing the non-magical humans, or release elder gods that will end the world. Mr. Friendly? A mid-tier monster that can't even leave the town he was created in, nearly getting away with wiping out the entire population after engaging in racist, homophobic serial killings for years.
There are a lot of Death Eater-esque magic supremacist factions, but actual, real-life hate crimes are a unique niche, and as was discussed in the cleanup thread, he handily displaces Kitana in the "trying to spree kill a large gathering of kids" niche. There's a serial killer of children in Bubba Moon, who has had a teen sacrificed every month since the 1960s, but he has decades to operate compared to Mr. Friendly's meager two, and has a larger populace to choose victims from—plus he can actually leave town. It's the deaths of three kids in a single small town in a single year that attracts Skulduggery and Valkyrie's attention; if he tried to match Moon's pattern, without the ability to spread out his attacks so it's less conspicuous, it would have brought the magic police down on him years ago. With that constraint, he operates as badly as he can.
Add on the psychological manipulation: cruelly trying to gaslight Jamie into blaming himself for Ethan's death, enforcing homophobia and racism by killing any who don't conform, being a backstabbing Bad Boss who leads on the townsfolk to their deaths and the deaths of their children? For what little resources he has, he stands out in a big way.
Verdict?
Maybe an uncertain one, but personally, I think he's bad enough for his tier and gets over any potential agency issues. I shall now await the inevitable comments about him being "Mr. Not-So-Friendly" and other such attempts at pointing out the obvious.