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
Ultimate Moral Compass
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Lucas
A Girl, Just One of Many Kinds
I disagree watching the movie myself. The plot is simple but it’s not disorganized, it’s pretty straightforward with the characters trying to fight against the monsters in the house that was created by Dr Lucas expiremenyinf on Susan . Plus beyond the fart joke (which appears once during the beginning of the movie before any of the events happen) there’s no moments of any real comedy, especially not from Lucas
Simple plot? Yeah. Very low budget? Absolutely so. Non conductive? Don’t think so. There a genuine threat, and plot beats with how the story happened and why it’s happening is enough imo to give it a candidate
It’s definitely poorly made but a movie’s quality doesn’t nesscsrily prohibit a candidate. And this at least has a plot and story
Edited by MermaidEyes15 on Mar 1st 2024 at 12:45:51 PM
Keep Fighting. Keep Loving.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Abstain on Lucas.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Gentle Laborer
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The movie is such a horrible mess that, rather than actually worrying about the monsters, the characters spend most of their screentime either walking around, chilling, drinking beer, sleeping or vomiting dialogue that nowadays would have been accused of being AI-generated. And there are more attempts at (failed) comedy, the main character—while the monsters are taking over the house, mind you—literally pours a drink on his friend's head and laughs at him... Again, for no discernible reason.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on Mar 1st 2024 at 3:11:42 PM
Goku Black
Yeah this sounds like its too goofy and not played seriously enough for this trope.
Lucas
Not the Eye
Hey fellas! Just thinking something due to Total Drama Odyssey getting a page. Has anyone thought about proposing Mr. Jensen of Disventure Camp or are you guys waiting until he comes back in the current season?
Lucas
I imagine it's more because that most if not all of us have never heard of that
You could try proposing him yourself. Just make sure to put in the effort (preferably by following this guide) or we might reject it.
Anyway, to Lucas
Edited by LoadsAndLoadsOfFreeTime on Mar 2nd 2024 at 8:38:07 AM
You've been kicked out of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. :(
It's a Total Drama fanmade show.
Yeah we got alot of those
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
From the note at the top of the thread:
7. 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.
Lucas.
Edited by MasterN on Mar 2nd 2024 at 9:46:59 AM
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
Knight Bachelor
Here's another one. Full disclosure: this candidate was previously vetoed, under the grounds that as an assassin, his body count was too small to compare to the war criminals with access to WMDs that make up some of the other Monsters. With the rule that a lower body count can still pass the heinous standard if their actions are more personally horrific, with permission from ACW I am resubmitting him for consideration. If he gets vetoed a second time, fair enough.
What is the work?
BattleTech. Picture Game of Thrones with less nudity and more Humongous Mecha, and you're not far off.
Who is the Dancing Joker? What has he done?
The Dancing Joker is the most famous moniker of the Inner Sphere's most prolific and sought after virtuoso assassin, who picked up the codename while living under the false identity of Noble Thayer (more on that in a minute). He changes identities more often than most people change socks, throwing himself into his cover identities.
Undercover as a florist, he uses pots made with plastic explosives and a cunning remote detonator to evade security sweeps to assassinate Melissa Steiner, grateful the contract considered collateral damage acceptable, because a bomb was the only real way to get at Melissa. Several others are wounded, killed, or maimed. He later assassinates Ryan Steiner, the man who'd hired him to assassinate Melissa Steiner, because the Federated Commonwealth intelligence service and Melissa's son, new First Prince Victor Steiner-Davion, wanted Ryan out of the picture and believed in poetic justice. The Dancing Joker evades their attempts to keep him in custody after killing Ryan, and vanishes.
He resurfaces on the world of Zurich posing as a writer named Noble Thayer, and when Zurich is embroiled in the Chaos March debacle and becomes a People's Republic of Tyranny, Thayer adopts the Dancing Joker calling card and codename he would be famous for and starts leading a resistance movement against Xu Ning, head of the new government. It's initially believe Noble Thayer is either a Davion agent or just a patriotic citizen, but the end of the novel reveals the Dancing Joker is the assassin who killed Melissa and Ryan, among unnamed others, and was seeking retirement on Zurich. But thwarting the new government reminded him how much he loves his job, and he figures overthrowing a planetary government looks pretty good on a resume.
But what really makes the Dancing Joker stand out is the story of Cathy Hanney. Cathy and Noble entered a romantic relationship, and Noble saved her from Xu Ning's State Sec agents and made her and her friends part of his resistance. For a mission, he paired Cathy with someone he had reason to suspect of being a traitor, and indeed he was, resulting in Cathy getting captured. Cathy died in interrogation, convinced Noble was coming to rescue her, because he said he would. But he'd just set her up as bait for a diversion from his real target, and the information Cathy gave up led to Xu Ning getting a hold of a disc with one of "Thayer's" novels, which predicted how Cathy's capture and interrogation would go, except that in the novel, "Thayer" did rescue her. The disc was a ruse to get a virus into the government computers and crash them, permitting the Dancing Joker to sneak in and kill Xu Ning.
Dancing Joker gets a few more assassinations under his belt, including a Dancing Joker copycat (can't tarnish the brand). He also kills Omi Kurita, Victor Steiner-Davion's love, and this causes him to be tracked down and ultimately killed by Minoru Kurita.
One Villainous Scene: Xu Ning and The Dancing Joker.
For most of the book, Xu Ning is set up as the evil dictator running his world as he sees fit, and a Hypocrite to boot: while he abolishes all class systems so everyone can be "equal and free," he sits in the old governor's mansion, availing himself of the wine cellar and gourmet cuisine. The Dancing Joker seems to be the heroic underdog fighting against the corrupt, tyrannical regime. Then we learn that Cathy died in interrogation, because while Xu Ning's enforcers will ask questions politely, they then need to verify the answers with torture. The Dancing Joker let her die, set her up to die, just to achieve his goals. When the evil dictator and the "noble hero" finally meet face to face, the scene shows us how the "hero" is, in fact, far worse than the evil he was fighting against. When Xu Ning expresses incredulity that the Dancing Joker let a woman he loved die, Dancing Joker simply replied "Noble loved her. I didn't."
Mitigating Factors?
Not really. The Dancing Joker does seem to readily connect with people in his cover identities, even forming romantic relationships, but as the above shows, the character he's playing is separate from who he truly is, and he can shed that guise at a moment's notice. However, Minoru got to him by leaving reminders of his past identities in his path, causing him to bounce back in and out of those identities, giving himself away and unbalancing him enough for Minoru to get to him and kill him.
Heinous Standard
This is where he fell down before. With guys like Stefan Amaris and Amos Furlough tossing around nukes like candy, Jason Karrige using one nuke in a particularly bad spot, and Katherine Steiner shattering the Federated Commonwealth with her temper-tantrums, the Dancing Joker lacks a body count. Hard numbers are not available, but at a rough guess, Dancing Joker might have a few hundred deaths to his name, between the bomb to kill Melissa Steiner and his Zurich insurgency. Amaris and Furlough can easily tally their bodies in the millions, Amaris honestly probably reaching billions. But the Dancing Joker is just so soulless I feel he eclipses them all in sheer horror. First time I read Bred for War, the bottom dropped out of my stomach at the reveal, I was utterly sickened by this guy.
Final Verdict
I've said my piece. The rest I leave to you.
Edited by ErikModi on Mar 2nd 2024 at 12:31:45 PM
The wifi here sucks
So Noble and Dancing Joker are the same person? I'm having a bit of trouble following the EP.
Hope your prepared for an unforgettable luncheon
Knight Bachelor
Yes they are. I'll try and make it more clear.
The wifi here sucks
One more question since neither EP really covered it, how does he stack up to other characters with similarly low resources like other assassins or generals in the wars (since it sounds like his rebellion puts him in similar standing to a minor military general). It's hard to compare him to the existing keepers since they're massively influential figures within the setting but we still need to look at other people of similar resources to him.
Hope your prepared for an unforgettable luncheon
Knight Bachelor
That's a good question. I honestly don't really know. Let's put him on the level of "planetary leader," a fairly broad category. I know there are some pretty awful planetary leaders in BattleTech, in particular one from a novel focused on the Knights of the Inner Sphere where there was kind of a Vietnam thing going on, but people at the "planetary leader" scale don't often get written about. The stories tend to focus either on the leaders of realms, or leaders of small units. "Planetary leader" scale apparently isn't big enough to set the course for the setting's overall story, but too big to be interesting to read about. So I just have no data how Dancing Joker might compare in terms of body count or general heinousness to other bad people in similar scale.
Excellent point, though. I wish I had more information for you.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Pending:
- The Bill: Craig Sutton (Atlantis)
- The Foreigner (2017): Hugh McGrath (Atlantis)
- Svidrigailov (Crow)
- Siggy (Crow)
- Ghost Rider (2022): Stefan Skaar (Mir)
- Split Second: The killer demon horrible godawful demon bat thing (Ravok)
- Taxi Driver (2021) Season 2: Bishop (Rm74)
- Tom Udo (Starkrafty)
This guy got a mention when the series came out but I do think there's enough on him to be worth discussing.
What's the work?
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a controversial series by Ryan Murphy. Dahmer himself is presented as a wreck of a human being far from this trope but we're given a glimpse of John Wayne Gacy's MO I think gives enough.
Who is Gacy? What has he done?
In his single scene, we see him lure in a young man with the promise of a job only to spike his drink before binding his hands. When the man resists and fights back Gacy angrily beats him and is implied to rape his victim before drowning him in his bath tub, referring to himself as god for the power he holds over the dying man and a lingering scent in the house hinting at a prior victim. Eventually caught, history shows us a bodycount of at least 33 poor souls lost to the bastard.
Heinousness?
He was declined for how brief his bit is but we see his horrible MO while Dahmer even emphasizes trying to kill or knock his own victims out before engaging in his own depravity to avoid prolonging suffering. Gacy is made out to be a far more intentionally sadistic killer and he's got the number of kills to be viable here.
Mitigating factors?
None.
Verdict?
I think he keeps, no further comment.
Goku Black
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
gacy.
Ultimate Moral Compass
Gacy
Insert title here
A Girl, Just One of Many Kinds
Yes to Gacy
Keep Fighting. Keep Loving.
Okaaaaaay, I don't think I ever expected to see Things being discussed here. Unfortunately, I'm familiar with the "movie" (thank you, RedLetterMedia) and I have to give Doc Lucas a![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]")
.
We have approved candidates from bad movies before—The Master from Manos: The Hands of Fate, for example—but at least most of them have a coherent plot, Things is practically a disorganized, chaotic compilation of random things happening for absolutely no reason—fart sounds included—the "story" is non-existent for the majority of the movie. It's so poorly-made that I genuinely don't think it's conductive enough to have a CM.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on Mar 1st 2024 at 2:31:44 PM