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
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Himmler.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Ock.
Just got back from Frozen Empire.
"It's like...a cliff, and if I do it, I'm just gonna...fall." "I think we're already falling."
Caesar
Ok, time for a really fun flick's discussion date:
What's the work?
Love Lies Bleeding is a sexy and violent crime thriller, starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian. Lou, owner of a gym in rural New Mexico, meets and falls head over heels for bodybuilder Jackie, and they begin a turbulent love affair that seems destined for happiness...until Jackie's connections to Lou's criminal father bring everything crashing down around them.
Who is Lou Sr.? What has he done?
- Played by Ed Harris, Lou Sr. is Lou's distant father who owns a gun range. Lou Sr. hires Jackie for her striking physique to be an employee at his gun range, and though Lou Sr. seems like a fine-if-creepy fellow, it's soon revealed that he's a gangster who rules the local underworld. He deals in weapons trafficking to and from Mexico, and for decades has killed any and everyone who could ever expose him before dumping their bodies down a deep, dark canyon in the desert.
- Lou Sr.'s not a great family man, either. He tried to force Lou to follow in his footsteps and made her kill people in cold blood for him before she refused to and stepped out of the criminal life. Lou Sr. further employs the husband of his other daughter, Beth—despite the fact that said husband, J.J., is a violent, abusive piece of shit who frequently puts Beth in the hospital. Lou Sr. only offers platitudes and false assurances that he'll "talk to" J.J. every time it happens, while truthfully valuing J.J.'s services as a minion more than he does stopping his daughter's abuse.
- So, things kick into gear when Jackie, high on steroids and infuriated by Lou's suffering when Beth winds up in the hospital again, tracks down and murders the horrid J.J. Lou, thinking fast, decides to finally bring down her father and help Jackie get away with the murder by dumping J.J.'s body in the same canyon where Lou Sr. has buried all his past victims, then starting a fire so that it will draw law enforcement to the canyon.
- Lou Sr. figures out what his daughter and Jackie are up to, and tries to turn the tables. He manipulates a drugged-out Jackie into murdering Lou's ex-girlfriend Daisy because Daisy could be a witness to implicate Lou Sr.'s outfit with the canyon, then tricks Jackie into trying a (doomed to fail) assassination attempt at Lou herself. Lou Sr. tries to drive a wedge between the girls and convince Lou to help him frame Jackie for all the deaths, but any chance Lou had of sticking with her dad is ruined when she learns from government agents that her long-lost mother, who supposedly "abandoned" the family years ago, was actually about to turn witness against Lou Sr...until she mysteriously "disappeared".
- Enraged against her father more than ever, Lou promises to help the government expose him, to which Lou Sr. dispatches a goon to murder Lou and silence her. Lou survives and finds Jackie being held hostage by her father, to which Lou Sr. shoots Lou in the leg, tortures her by jamming his finger into the wound, and prepares to execute her for "betraying" him even as she begs for her life.
- Luckily, Jackie springs in to save the day and though Lou has the opportunity to kill her father, she decides to leave him for approaching police so he can suffer in future imprisonment for his crimes, while herself and Jackie leave for better prospects.
Mitigating features?
Lou Sr. is a fun one, because he does show ability to care. He visits Beth in the hospital, he tries to maintain a relationship with Lou, he enjoys having bugs and small animals as pets, and even takes time in one scene to feed and water a caged bird whose owner had neglected it.
...buuuut it's all subverted in the final act pretty thoroughly. Lou Sr. maintains an appearance of a family man but he murdered his wife for planning to turn on him; he tries to kill Lou and needlessly tortures her beforehand when she also tries to expose him; he lets Beth stay in an abusive relationship so he can exploit her husband's services; and, even with his animals? When Lou Sr. learns he's being closed in on by law enforcement? He flies into a rage and kills all of his animals just to hurt something, even biting the head off his "prized" beetle.
Lou Sr. is able to feign care, but when anything disappoints or angers him, he'll discard it without much fanfare.
Heinousness?
Plenty bad... he's been killing people for decades and filling a canyon with their corpses; when the cops show pictures of their findings, the floor of the canyon is littered with bones. Lou Sr. further forced Lou to kill for him, manipulates Jackie into killing Daisy for him, lets Beth be violently abused, murdered his wife...and caps it all off by trying to torture and kill Lou herself.
Final Verdict?
Methinks he lands.
Edited by Ravok on Mar 23rd 2024 at 2:04:07 AM
WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!
Not the Eye
Jogo
Lou Sr.
Edit: ![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Irma
Edited by jlvs200s on Mar 23rd 2024 at 10:23:51 AM
"Stand proud, Sukuna, you are strong." | He/Him
pronounced 'Scraggle'
And yes to Lou.
Here's my next Saint! We're returning to the 80s Simon Dutton series, now that I've finally tracked down the obscenely hard to find other episodes (thanks Ravok!).
From the TV movie The Saint: Wrong Number...
What has Irma Davos done?
- Irma Davos is introduced to us as the lover of Georges Millas, a washed-up arms dealer who wants to come back onto the arms market. To do this, Millas strikes a deal with the film's Big Bad, the genocidal terrorist Peter Lang, and has Irma seduce or otherwise dispose of any obstacles to this deal.
- Unfortunately for Millas, he's also a bungling idiot, and after his mistakes repeatedly complicate the deal and get the Saint on their trail, Lang decides Georges needs to go, ordering him to flee the country. Irma goes one step further and shoots Millas dead even as he pleads for his life.
- Okay, let's start again…Irma is The Dragon to, and the lover of, Peter Lang. A ruthless Femme Fatale who glories in the power she has over men, Irma learned all she could from the arms-trafficking business over years at Millas' side, before disposing of him and teaming up with Lang instead for his master plan.
- Along the way, Irma ruthlessly arranges for any obstacles to be silenced, either through threats, torture, or outright murder. When one of her allies starts to get cold feet about the scheme, Irma gleefully threatens to murder not only the man's friends but his wife as well. When the Saint continues to pursue them, Irma kidnaps the Girl of the Week, Stella, and threatens to kill her too.
- And just what is Irma and Lang's master plan, you may ask? Simple. Lang has absconded with no less than twenty nuclear missiles he plans to sell to people he knows will use them on targets all over the world. If countless innocent people die and the entire world is thrown into chaos? Whatever.
- But…there's a problem. Lang doesn't want the money. In fact, he's peachy-keen on dying for his cause (more on that in the "heinous standard" section). And Irma doesn't particularly care to die before she gets her payday…so she shoots Lang in the gut, and leaves him to slowly die as she makes off with the missiles herself.
- Okay. Let's try this one more time…Irma is the real Big Bad of Wrong Number. Irma has been using both Millas and Lang from the start in order to make herself more powerful, seducing them and making them both utterly fall for her before she stabs them in the back. Irma still fully intends on selling the nukes and wasting countless innocent lives, but unlike Lang, she intends on surviving and continuing to dominate the arms market past that.
- Unfortunately—for her—Lang survives juuuust long enough to pay her back in kind and riddle her full of bullets, just as the Saint walks in.
- Absolutely nothing. Compared to both Millas and Lang, Irma is driven by nothing but greed.
- Irma is easily the worst in the movie and probably in the Simon Dutton TV series. And that's impressive, because Peter Lang himself is awful. His "ideology" isn't redeeming in the slightest. It's based on Heath Ledger Joker-esque genocide and chaos for the fuck of it. Check out Lang's Motive Rant:
"Do you know what this is, Herr Royce? Coral. Do you know how it's made? By genocide. Yes. Each new generation of the living organism implants itself on the previous generation, killing it. A year passes. The cycle is repeated. A new layer of corpses is added. And so…the great reefs are built. Do you understand? This is the model for a new form of human society[...]The necessary precondition for a new order is chaos. And that is what I offer. Twenty rockets. Twenty airports destroyed, all parliament buildings, embassies, conference centers, whatever you choose. All security measures, useless. Global panic…chaos."
- That said…Lang genuinely seems to think he's found a kindred spirit in Irma. He genuinely falls for her and seems to think she agrees with his worldview entirely. He's mistaken. Irma exchanges his "ideology" for pure mercenary greed, and to that end she's willing to kill just as many people as Lang while completely lacking in his one redeeming quality.
- Aside from that, nothing to really talk about. All the villains of the Simon Dutton TV movie series had their own distinct niches, so nobody really trips on each other's shoes (and the villains who don't count aren't anywhere close to being as heinous as the ones who do):
- Wrong Number: Terrorists
- Fear in Fun Park: Sex trafficker (already qualified)
- Brazilian Connection: Baby traffickers (I'll have an EP for one right after this)
- Software Murders: Serial killer targeting brilliant scientists
- Blue Dulac: Evil gangster
- Big Bang: Would-be Corrupt Corporate Executive
Goku Black
Lou sr
Ultimate Moral Compass
Irma and Daddy Lou
Goku Black
irma
Not the Eye
Irma, papa Lou
Gentle Laborer
Lou and Irma Davos (Seaworth)
- Someone's Watching Me! (1978): Herbert Stiles is a perverted Serial Killer with a taste for psychologically torturing women until they are completely exhausted from the torment. Always making the murders look like suicides to stay off the radar, Stiles claims three victims before setting his eyes on Leigh Daniels, following her to Los Angeles solely to make her life a living hell. Stiles frames another man for stalking Leigh to give her false hope; murders Leigh's best friend and forces her to hear an audio recording of the act; and finally tries to murder Leigh herself after getting bored of toying with her.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on Mar 23rd 2024 at 6:29:07 AM
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to Lou and Irma.
Curious: How many victims does the Serial Killer have?
EDIT: Also, how many more Saint candidates? Any more radio dramas?
Edited by ACW on Mar 23rd 2024 at 5:35:22 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
Huh...Lou Sr. seems to care about anim—
Never mind. :D
for Lou Sr. And Irma Davos. How many more are we getting from The Saint?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I see ACW and I are on the same page. ![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
Edited by Tyk5919 on Mar 23rd 2024 at 5:36:42 AM
I write stories and shiz. You can read them here.
pronounced 'Scraggle'
3—5 more candidates from The Saint, depending on if I feel like posting the adaptations of Rayt Marius and Kane Luker from the Paul Rhys radio dramas.
Also, the serial killer tops off at half-a-dozen (pretty unspectacular) murders/attempted murders. He doesn't count.
Edited by Starkrafty on Mar 23rd 2024 at 3:38:12 AM
Watch for the sign of the Saint — he will be back!
Lizzid people!
Yes to Lou and Irma.
Reserving Immaculate.
Okay... Imaginary, kind of iffy on. In it we have a stepmother (Jessica) who returns to her childhood home where her youngest stepdaughter, Alice, finds a stuffed bear named Chauncey who turns out to have been the same imaginary friend Jessica had.
The film establishes that ifs are spirits that become attached to children and feed on their imagination and turn violent when they are abandoned.
With Chauncey he has Alice do a list which turns out to be a ritual to take the girl to the realm the Never-Ever. Its lists gets increasingly gruesome with Chauncey nearly having her drive her arm on the nail of an upturned plank.
He uses Alice to lure Jessica so he could feed on her imagination for eternity and drove her father to madness when, while saving her, he looks into Chauncey's eyes which are comprised of the hundreds of pure imagination he had siphoned from children with the indication that Chauncey had done this for a long time with him going after another child when Alice burns his spider form but not before trying to kill Jessica after driving her to madness.
But overall iffy there. Probably will think more on it later.
Edited by AustinDR on Mar 23rd 2024 at 4:09:34 AM
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Lou and Irma
And welcome back Beast.
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Lou, Irma
Not opposed to putting Adolf and Himmler in a tree under multiple works since there's one for Hydra.
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
to Lou and Irma
for Lou Sr. and Irma Davos.
to Marvel's Himmler
Himmler, Lou, Irma
Lou, Irma and Mr. Bimmler.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]")
for fic!Ock.
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.