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
Not the Eye
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Novel!Skar King, Palpatine AGAIN and Elizabeth
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Ennard
Barb / Temporary Kylo
to Elizabeth
Have seen Amazon's Fallout, DM to discuss if you'd like.
Edited by Snoketrope on Apr 12th 2024 at 1:04:30 AM
The First man![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Goku Black
Elizabeth
to General Blessington, Palpatine, Star King and Elizabeth Arkham.
Well that brings it to 8 7 and 2 Abstains for Barry Flint. So its probably a safe bet they don't make it. Sorry for dragging this out so long.
Rommel, Varukan, Boys, Skar King, Griffixis, Dermot, Jack, Hector, Alfie, Palps, other Skar King and Elizabeth
Catherine, Koopa, Barry and Ennard
Just to be clear in Cizin, what does the real one actually do?
RIP Toriyama
Yes to Alfie (good re-eval!), another papa Palps, and Elizabeth
Gonna reserve Civil War (2024).
- Needful Things film/miniseries adaptation: Leland Gaunt seems to be a charming, kindly old salesman, but is actually the Devil himself. For centuries, Gaunt has walked the Earth and sowed all manner of mayhem, from plagues; to world wars; to the atom bomb, feeding off the mass misery he instills. In his latest form, Gaunt travels to small towns and slowly corrupts the population by offering them magical, valuable items that they feel compelled to own, and requesting a "favor" in return. Gaunt uses these "favors" to force the citizens to hurt and turn on each other, culminating in citywide chaos and murder that Gaunt revels in. Arriving in Castle Rock and beginning his usual procedure, Gaunt uses the young boy Brian as a stooge to carry out his will, and when two women kill each other thanks to Gaunt, Gaunt goads Brian into attempting suicide out of guilt for his part in things. After raping the fiance of Sheriff Pangford, Gaunt tries to drive Castle Rock into tearing itself apart and, failing at this, tries to use another corrupted puppet to simply kill the entire town in a suicide bombing.
Alrighty, lemme kick off discussion of this one:
What's the work?
Fright Krewe is a Dreamworks Animation production that is created in part by Eli Roth of all people ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
An animated series set in New Orleans, it follows a group of 5 teenagers who are gifted the power of the "Loa", and their various journeys through a southern gothic landscape to uncover the truth of their powers; the existence of all kinds of monsters in their town; and face off against the demonic Big Bad, Belial.
Belial is already listed, as he he more than should be. Starkrafty and therealjackieboy will each have an Arc Villain from Season 2 to discuss, but in the meantime? Let me talk Belial's Dragon:
Who is the Reveler? What has he done?
- A demon of "excess and chaos" who takes the form of a jester when summoned by Belial early in Season 2, the Reveler serves as Belial's chief agent throughout the season.
- In his debut appearance, the Reveler wreaks havoc at a construction site and endangers the crew working there, nearly killing at least 2 men. When our heroic "Krewe" investigate, the Reveler reveals his twisted niche: if he plants his patented beaded necklaces on a person, they become his giggling, Stepford Smiler slaves who are fully aware of what they are doing, but forced to carry out the Reveler's will. He forces the Krewe to fight each other before he is repelled.
- Terrorizing random citizens in his free time, the Reveler later sabotages the Krewe's protective measures at the Unity festival so that a monstrous rot demon summoned by Belial can attack the citizens freely. The Reveler gleefully oversees the attack and even tries to cause further mayhem with his own two hands—restrained only by a pragmatic Belial—and even when the Krewe manage to beat the rot demon, the Reveler uses his beads to take control of dozens of townsfolk and threaten them with mass self-harm if the Krewe doesn't stand down. He illustrates the threat by forcing a few people to twist their arms in painful ways for lulz.
- In his final bit of fun, the Reveler uses a combination of his magic and Belial's to create a monstrous, kaiju-like mecha beast with which he lays siege to the streets. The Reveler controls the creation and tries to wipe out a gathering of humans, rougarous and vampires, but notable side characters Fiona and Otis sacrifice their own lives to halt the Reveler long enough for the Krewe to figure out how to banish him back to the underworld: "silence his laugh", which they go about by literally tearing his voice box out, leaving him mute and undoing his tether to the real world so that he is dragged back to the underworld.
Mitigating features?
Zilch. He doesn't actually speak, but he's got plenty of characterization as a giggling sadist who shows the ability to plot. His allegiance with Belial is purely one of enjoying the carnage he wreaks.
Heinousness?
He's plenty bad enough by the show's standards, with threatening hundreds of lives and having a twisted niche of mind control that leaves the victims aware but unable to stop their bodies from obeying him. He plays a key role in Belial's rot demon scheme and then takes dozens of people hostage under threat of forcing them to hurt themselves, before controlling the giant mecha beast to nearly kill dozens more folk.
Perhaps the oooone hiccup is that the Reveler's rapsheet is almost entirely under Belial's purview and following his boss's schemes, but I think the Reveler adds enough of his own twisted methods to things that, coupled with him being such a maniacal freak that Belial himself has to hold him back in multiple scenes, he manages to stand out.
Final Verdict?
Keep
Edited by Ravok on Apr 12th 2024 at 3:50:21 AM
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Goku Black
the Reveler
Jogo
The Reveler
....Phenomenal
for Palpatine ad infinitum, Elizabeth, Skar King v2, and Reveler.
Not the Eye
the Reveler
to the Reveler.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to the Reveler. Is Belial dead yet?
Also, where should I put this Gaunt? Film? TV? TV Movies? Two of the three? All three?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Palpatine, Elizabeth, novelization Skar King, and the Reveler.
Yes to Alfie, Skar King - again, Elizabeth, The Reveller and a shocked, absolutely dumbfounded for Palpatine.
pronounced 'Scraggle'
Yea to the Reveler. I'll have mine up tomorrow (maybe late tonight) when the deadline on my writeups pass.
Watch for the sign of the Saint — he will be back!
Lies and Violence!
Aye to the Reveler.
Next for Dark Knights of Steel.
Who is the Green Man?
A Composite Character of Green Lantern, Lex Luthor, and the Joker. Once the chief advisor to King Thomas Wayne, Lex one day received a mysterious warning from a flying stranger—Jor-El, whose superhuman senses allowed him to sense the beginnings of a volcano eruption several days before it occurred. Jor-El sought to save the Waynes' kingdom without revealing his family, so along with the warning, he also drafted up plans that could redirect the lava flow, allowing them to save everyone if the military began working immediately.
Unfortunately, Lex "was stubborn and prideful, and had his own beliefs." In a rage, he burned the warning and the plans, refusing to consider even the possibility that they could be correct. The day of the eruption, the peeved Kryptonians, not wanting to see another world "lost to arrogance and ignorance", decide to reveal their existence and confront the Waynes' court, demanding to know why they haven't done anything. Naturally, Thomas has questions for Lex.
Thomas is... uh, let's just say he's offended by this abysmal reassurance, even more so when Lex tries to have Jor-El and Lara killed when they continue insisting the eruption will occur. Long story short, the Kryptonians save the day and are lauded as heroes by the kingdom... save Luthor, who is left stewing in rage after losing all his prestige for his stupidity. Unfortunately, he happens to find something quite interesting that emerged with the eruption: a Green Lantern ring, capable of granting great magic—magic that can slay a god, and magic that seemingly has a mind of its own.
Encouraged by the whisperings of the ring, Lex attacks the Els while they're on a trip, remarking with a mere "Whoops! Wrong carriage!" when he accidentally kills the Waynes instead. The cackling madman escapes, remaining a boogeyman for years as Thomas and Martha's son, Bruce, becomes obsessed with destroying all magic.
While all this is going on, there's a prophecy that the Kryptonians are demons that will destroy the world. A neighboring nation, the Kingdom of Storms ruled by Black Lightning, believes this prophecy, and the ring encourages the Joker to work with them to end the Els. Recruiting a young, naive Green Arrow and gifting him a magic arrow, the Joker successfully has him assassinate Jor-El, quickly escalating international tensions to the tipping point of war. A few more unrelated incidents later, and the Kingdom of Storms—with their Amazonian allies—begin marching on the House of El. The Joker accompanies them, using his powerful magic to save the armies from Poison Ivy's deadly forest and ensure they reach the Kryptonians' capital.
This has escalated far beyond revenge, at this point. The ring promises Joker that, once all these world powers are dead, a new age will begin that he can be a part of. So, when the fighting begins, the Joker turns on his allies and begins indiscriminately blasting everyone he sees with green flames, wracking up as many casualties as possible. Things escalate from there, the tide turns and a tentative peace is established, with the Joker making his escape... only for the ring to tell him he's outlived his usefulness as a pawn, and that they have no need of a man who thinks inanimate objects can talk.
With that, the White Martian that has been telepathically communicating with him this entire time ambushes and kills him.
Heinous enough?
The thing with the volcano isn't bad enough on its own—it is bad, sure, but the main crux of the situation is that Lex refuses to believe it could blow up, so it's hard to call the near destruction of the kingdom intentional. That said, it adds a bit more edge to his later crimes: in response to being proven wrong, he spitefully works to kill the Kryptonians for decades, killing his old rulers in the process, and when he succeeds with one of them, it's in collaboration with another kingdom, intentionally putting them on the road to war. He further plays a big role in transporting his allies' armies to attack the House of El's forces, then begins murdering everyone he can when the fighting starts.
The White Martians are obviously the true masterminds, but they're an alien race that dwarfs Joker in power (their boss is next). Amanda Waller is also a major collaborator to the Martians, and one in the know at that, but she's an influential general with more resources than Joker as a lone guy with magic (and ostensibly cares for her people). In comparison to her, Joker gets up to a lot more death and direct involvement with the war.
Mitigating factors?
Martian Manhunter says that, when Lex found the ring, it began "whispering to his mind." They don't go into more detail on that. Is it possible the White Martians telepathically influenced his actions? Maybe. But he was already an arrogant dickweed before he found the ring, so more likely they just did what they've been doing throughout the whole comic: talking to him, giving him suggestions and instructions he carries out with relish—a variation of Psycho Supporter stuff. None of it is his own original ideas, but as far as he's aware the ring is a disembodied consciousness that can't do anything on its own, so he'll happily enable its visions of destruction if he gets satisfaction from it.
He also tells a hesitant Green Arrow that, according to the ring, killing Jor-El will be what saves the world. Buuut he's a sadist who happily kills random people while laughing, so I don't think he cares much about that.
Not the Eye
the Green Man
Jogo
Green Man
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
for Elizabeth Arkham, the Reveler and Green Man.
Lizzy, Reveler, & Green Man (there’s already a Green Lantern with that name)
pronounced 'Scraggle'
Yes to the Green Man. I was a little concerned about agency until the clarification it was a White Martian giving him nudges instead of a full-on corruptive Artifact of Doom.
Watch for the sign of the Saint — he will be back!
to Greenie
Lies and Violence!
