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
Woagh
Ultimate Moral Compass
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
The Lord
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Lester
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
to Killer Clown Leader, Doctor Octopus, Unnamed Terrorist, Colonel Ratcher, Emperor Palpatine, Sauron, Herbert Stiles, Huntsman, Kapitan Gunther, John Gilligan, Houston Armstrong, Saruman, Stanley Goff, Soraya, the Jersey Devil, the Judge, James, Carl Bruder, Fitz Alexander, Nui Harime, Zebra 27, Len Alwena Foska, Nathaniel Crozier, Darramouss, Monkey Fist, Joanne Koch, Cardinal Alba, the Entity, Rabban, Rabbit, Viroxx, Queem, Heinrich Himmler (I have to say the idea of their soul getting snapped by two demons fighting over who gets to play with it is one of the most amusing demises I've ever heard), Lou Sr, Irma Davos, Palpatine, Apocalypse and Dr. Ian Lester.
Abstain on the Lord of the Frozen Wastes. He sounds bad, but I'm not sure its bad enough for a literal god.
Well you miss a lot when your gone for a week.
Any way now that I'm back, I have a quick candidate from one of my favourite shows.
Now Death in Paradise is a very fun long-running Cozy Mystery series, featuring a series of Fish out of Water British detectives who for one reason or another end up working on the gorgeous Caribbean Island of Saint Marie, a beautiful paradise in every respect aside from the little detail that someone inevitably ends up getting murdered each week. Though amusingly its not the killer for us to talk about, its victim.
From the show's most recent season’s “Serving Up Murder” I give you Stanley Drake.
Who Is he:
A charismatic Scottish celebrity chef and successful Hotelier, Stanley Drake is a very successful man famous for opening multiple luxury resorts throughout the Caribbean. However, what Drake considers his true passion is his cooking contest, where he holds a regular event for one talented chef to become his new head chef, who Drake promises to make all their dreams come true. And even if you don’t win, you still will get a wonderful step up in your career.
In every respect Drake seems too good to be true, mostly because it is. Behind closed doors, Drake is a vicious taskmaster and terrifying sexual predator, who uses his cooking contests to gain access to young vulnerable women for him to abuse.
What Does he Do:
Thirty years before the events of the series, back when he was just starting out in Saint Marie, Drake was approached by the young aspiring chef Lucky Claybourne, who was hoping that she could persuade Drake to invest in a bar she wanted to open with her best friend Catherine. Drake led her along until they were alone together and raped Lucky traumatising her to the point she immediately left the island.
Building up his empire, Drake started up his competition to find new victims. One of them Dionne Bertrand won at his resort in Jamaica. She quickly found working under Drake to be a nightmare, especially when he first raped her when she was only 19. Enraged she took a baseball bat to his car, realising she might be an issue Drake made it clear to her that no one would believe her if she told and then gave her a character reference to get rid of her.
A few weeks before the events of the episode, seeking more publicity for his latest competition to celebrate the opening of his fifth resort back in Saint Marie. Drake approached Lucky (now a famous chef along with her husband Wesley) who froze upon seeing him again, taking advantage Drake raped her again and this time photographed it, threatening Lucky that unless she agreed to take part in his competition he would give the photo’s to the ill-tempered Wesley and tell him they had been having an affair behind his back (Wesley has long been envious of the more successful Drake).
Thus, his latest competition away, Drake had his eye upon his next victim, the young Celeste Duvall, making it clear to her the night before the competition that she could either sleep with him or he would destroy her. Quite by chance, the terrified Celeste ended up hiding from him in the ladies, where Lucky and Dionne were (who had moved to Saint Marie and secretly joined the latest contest in the hopes of using it to expose that for all his claims of helping the local economy, Drake was really forcibly evicting local businesses to build his new resort).
Thus, all three of them came to realise they were all victims of Drake, and seeing no other option, they conspired to kill him, by secretly poisoning each of their dishes with just enough of local poison that eating all three, would be lethal. Thus, Drake fell down dead whilst in the middle of giving an interview.
The episode ends with the protagonists reflecting on just how many victims Drake could possibly had, with them hoping that the press expose and setting up a helpline will lead to them finally coming forward, as each one increases Lucky, Dionne and Celeste’s chances of getting a lighter sentence.
Any Freudian Excuse or Redeeming Traits:
Nothing that stands up. Drake’s backstory hasn’t gone into much depth, beyond being a success story. Drake likes to present himself as a charming and caring man who just wants to help the next generation become successes, but the episode makes it clear this is entirely a front and Drake is truthfully a sadistic predator, with even a number of his lines during the interview having a lot darker implications once we know the real purpose of his cooking contest.
Heinous Standard:
Easily clears it. Death In Paradise is not a series you would expect to have any candidates. Whilst every episode features at least one murder, it's overall a light-hearted Christie-esq series. The highest body count in the show's 13 seasons to date is three victims and one attempted (all of whom were just shot). Generally, Asshole Victims and Sympathetic Murderer's are the series rule (amusingly Drake isn’t even the first utterly loathsome celebrity chef to get deservedly killed in this series), but of them, he’s easily the worst.
Rape on the other hand is a very different matter. In the entire show, there is only one other rapist (who might also count, I’m going to check them out), but even then Drake is still in the clear. Whilst we don’t get an idea of exactly how many victims he is, the episode makes it clear that he’s a very prolific predator, having been active for at least thirty years.
Conclusion:
A pretty easy keeper I’d say.
Still, what do you think?
Edited by MGD107 on Mar 24th 2024 at 3:46:26 AM
Not the Eye
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Yes to Drake.
Yeah the shows heinous standard despite being 10 series plus I believe is incredibly light so Drake seems fine.
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
for Ian Lester and Stanley Drake.
Abstain on the Lord of the Wastes, and no to the Lotso quotes.
....Phenomenal
for Lester and Drake.
Abstaining on the Lord.
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
Drake
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to Drake.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Ultimate Moral Compass
Drake
Palps, Apoc, Lester, Drake
Lord, Lester, & Evil Gordon Ramsey
Also, not sure if it’s still going, but I think a yes to Rabban is good (though granted I think Feyd is a little worse)
Palpatine and Apoc, and Lan Lester
What is the work?
Tricky People is psa about Yello Dyno teaching children about sexual predators who are called tricky people and how to look out for them and run away.
While mutliple predators are shown one of them is shown as the trickest of them all.
Who is Reginald Charming and what does he do?
Charming is the president of monument entertainment who is secretly a serial child porn producer. First soon on a child website to look for more victims until Carmen a previous victim goes to his office to get him to give up the graphic pictures of her or else she will tell to which he responds by saying that he will just release the photo if she does.
After Carmen leaves Wendell his minion he uses to bring children tells him about Carmen's friend Lyric to have as his new victim. Going to the mall to groom her by watching puppies with her and calming to have know her when she was little he ends up getting caught by Yello Dyno who he tells that he is a upstanding citizen.
Having Wendell bring Lyric and her friends except Carmen to his office he has then dress in sexual outfits and takes photos of them with then except Lyric who he tries to force take pornagrahic photos and grabs her to take her from leaving.
That is until Yello Dyno comes in the office saving Lyric and tells Charming to give up Carmen's photos which Charming smugly refuses and says to Yello will never know the number for the safe which Yello responds by breaking in and take the photos which leads Charming to tell him not to hurt him. Yello leaves and tells Charming that he is finished and Charming is lastly shown trying to groom anotger child as a teacher only for the police to arrest him for child abuse.
Redeeming qualites? Is he bad enough?
None at all. Which the film does say that "Tricky people" have pain in their hearts and might do what they doe because of something that happened in their past we never see or are told any of that for Charming.
While the film does have silly moments with the photos he takes of the children in the office having a weridly upbeat song the moment he decides to make child porn photos of Lyric when they leave it stops and any funny moment with him and Wendell is solely focused on Wendell. Most humor when Dino catches Charming at the mall is there to show vile he is with Dino threating to attack him.
He does praise Wendell for bringing him multiple at once children but more so out of being surprised that he was able to do it and ultimate treats him as a dimwited annoyence.
All the other predators are foiled before their plan even begins and don't have a pattern like Charming with Charming's actions causing Carmen to crying that she is not a child any more and treating to unleash the photos if she tells.
Verdict?
"Charming"
Edited by umaprasis on Mar 24th 2024 at 7:04:28 AM
Woagh
Abstaining on Reginald Charming, i've seen the short and its so damn Mood Whiplash-y i really can't upvote anyone from it.
Edited by DoodSlayer136 on Mar 24th 2024 at 6:19:16 AM
NOISE IS CALLING, PICK UP PHONE
to Lester, Drake and Charming (I was listening to "Little Girls" while reading his proposal lmao); changing my vote on the Losto quotes to ; abstaining on the Lord
Edited by LoadsAndLoadsOfFreeTime on Mar 24th 2024 at 6:48:32 AM
You've been kicked out of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. :(
Wanted to propose this quote from Steele from Balto
[...]
Steele: Go ahead, wolfdog! You'll never get home! I'll make sure of that!
Those seem like 2 separate lines thrown together
Binfield, please stop suggesting a bunch of random quotes in hopes that one sticks
REALITY IS AN ILLUSION, THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM, BUY GOLD BYEEEE! | She/Her
Yes to Lester and Drake. Gonna abstain on the Lord and Charming. Following my proposal I'm also gonna reserve the ongoing Choujin X.
....Phenomenal
Weak for Charming, I think.
Really not feeling the Balto quote. Without context, the first line just sounds like he's ignoring the kids because he cares too much about his job. It's dismissive, sure, but doesn't really read as malicious. And the second line is just a really generic threat, and doesn't even hint at what he'd do to stop Balto from getting home. Plus the two lines don't seem to actually be relevant to each other.
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Abstain on Charming
No to the Balto quote
Got a video suggestion of Airachnid? From 10:40 to 13:10. Thoughts?
https://youtu.be/_ORnDc7Kj_s?si=FQO5HmbnJllQjfpT
Edited by WetFlannels on Mar 24th 2024 at 3:14:32 PM
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
I think for Charming and definite for the Airachnid video.
No to the Balto quote.
Ian Lester, Stanley Drake. Want a second opinion on Reginald. This is a kids' PSA? Not much can be onscreen, I'm assuming.
I'll say yes to Lester.
So the troper who messaged me asking about my Metal Gear candidate never got back to me. Any other Metal Gear fans interested in deciding via PM if the character is worth discussing before I make an effortpost?
Edited by AmateurStorytime on Mar 24th 2024 at 2:22:00 AM
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