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
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Ultron and Lei Shen
Yes to the Champ and Ultron.
For Lei Shen, I'm willing to buy that he's a Knight Templar that cared more for his own power than actually following the Titan's design. He was even brutal towards other Mogu that refused to follow him, but there is some evidence he just have genuine respect for those loyal to him. On the Isle of Thunder, there is a Mogu graveyard called the Court of Bones consisting of tombs with epitaphs that Lei Shen had erected of his most valued followers.
Some choice bits from the epitaphs include from one of his generals, Haqin of the Hundred Spears, and from the smith who foreged his weapons, Forgemaster Deng.
- Afterwords, the Thunder King presented Haqin with a hundred of the finest golden spears crafted by mogu forgemasters. He became one of Lei Shen's greatest lieutenants, and after his death, the spears were buried at his side.
- Just before his death, the Forgemaster created his finest works - a spear, axe, and helm especially gifted to Lei Shen himself. At the official ceremony whereupon Deng was finally laid to rest, Lei Shen uttered the following words: "Today, a star leaves earth and ascends to the heavens."
The last bit in particular seems a bit too sincere for be to wholly say he only cared about such valued servants only as tools. Complete Monster candidates need to have no hints of redeeming qualities, and it could be said Lei Shen has a smidgeon here and there.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
The Ultimate Lifeform
That just reads like an acknowledgement of a competent forgemaster to me. Nothing more. He also said that same person would suffer dire (read excruciatingly fatal) consequences should he try using the Fist of Ra-Den, a weapon Lei Shen stole from the Highkeeper, and tasked the Forgemaster with unlocking the secrets of since even Lei Shen himself wasn't strong enough to use it.
Edited by ForgoLight on Apr 23rd 2024 at 12:50:17 PM
"Us weirdos have to stick together!"
pronounced 'Scraggle'
Yeah, but that's a pretty freaking respectful "acknowledgment," to the point I think him honoring his fallen forgemaster takes him out of this trope. "No" to Lei Shen.
Edited by Starkrafty on Apr 23rd 2024 at 2:01:48 AM
Watch for the sign of the Saint — he will be back!
Yeah, they seems sincere, nay to him
REALITY IS AN ILLUSION, THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM, BUY GOLD BYEEEE! | She/Her
...Phenomenal
for the Champ and Ultron.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
for Lei Shen.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Pending:
- Carl Reissman (Atlantis)
- Hotel Manager (fanman)
- The First Omen: Cardinal Lawrence (LarryMullen)
- Sanctimony: Tom Turner (TheMadCr0w)
(NTG)- Sentinels-related (Ravok):
- Skul: The Hero Slayer: Alexander (SomeNewGuy)
Edited by ACW on Apr 23rd 2024 at 4:52:52 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Not the Eye
Switch for Shen
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
the Duke was downvoted
Goku Black
shen.
No to Lei Shen.
Insert title here
So the Hotel manager got eight yeses, 2 nos, with one abstain (leaning no), so they just barely passed. Here's the writeup:
"DON'T LET THE BELLHOPS BITE": The Hotel Manager runs a hotel in the Dark Dimension, staffed by the Murder Monkeys. Having had countless previous guests torn apart, the Manager taunts the latest arrival before sending the Monkeys after them, prompting a wild chase, ending with yet another victim.
Edited by fanman on Apr 23rd 2024 at 2:06:05 AM
Switching Lei Shen. Absolutely godawful, but a redeeming quality is a redeeming quality.
RIP Toriyama
Yes to Blood & Eye, and Ultron; Nay to Shen with that note
- Sentinel-related:
- The original Master Mold was designed as the overlord of the Sentinels, meant to head up the capture of mutants across Earth, until it gained sentiene and became a threat to the whole planet. Deciding to exterminate all mutants, the Master Mold plans to then lead the Sentinels in conquering humankind itself, and forces its horrified creator Bolivar Trask to help it in this goal lest it destroy half of America one city at a time. Though seemingly destroyed, the Master Mold is restarted by Steven Lang's brainwaves, and begins a new murder spree against humans and mutants alike. The Master Mold tries to unleash a lethal virus that will painfully kill all mutants, and when it learns that the virus has evolved to target humans as well, the Master Mold shrugs it off and notes that a small percentage of humans will survive that it can enslave.
- Bastion is a seemingly-human enemy of all mutantkind, whose hatred for them extends into unbridled sadism. Bastion was born from a magical merging of Master Mold and Nimrod into an organic, amnesiac being, and though raised by a compassionate human woman, Bastion still developed an egotistical, prejudiced desire to destroy mutants and take over the world. Creating "Zero Tolerance", Bastion used the operation to carry out the systematic kidnapping, experimentation and execution of dozens of mutants, notably subjecting Professor X and the teenaged Jubilee to weeks of sensory deprivation and Mind Rape. Bastion's preferred method of targeting mutants is by framing them for acts of terrorism he himself commits, such as trying to slaughter a camp of his own followers and their families to pin it on Rogue; or by using a virus to force innocent mutants' powers to go into out of control and kill hundreds of humans around them. Bastion further creates "Prime Sentinels" by kidnapping and turning humans into cyborg sleeper agents, killing any of them who regain their sentience, and plans to transform all of humankind into these hollowed-out drones when he succeeds. Later reviving a variety of mutant haters, Bastion keeps them as his slaves even as some beg for death, then tries to annihilate 800,000 humans just to kill a pocket of mutants. Even when he discovers a future where mutants no longer exist, Bastion deliberately travels to the past so he can painfully, horrifically "evolve" millions of humans into mutants, just so he will always have mutants to torture and butcher.
So it appears that Cardinal Lawrence from The First Omen has 12 upvotes and no downvotes and has therefore been approved. Yay! My very first CM proposal to succeed! 
This is Bill Nighy's second time as a CM after The Constant Gardener.
How is this for a write-up?:
- Cardinal Lawrence is the leader of a conspiracy within the Catholic Church. His outwardly friendly demeanor masks a depraved and calculating mind that is responsible for some unspeakable crimes. On his orders, over a dozen women are raped by a demonic jackal with the goal of creating an Antichrist who will prove so terrifying that people will have no choice but to turn away from secularism and back to the Church. Given that the conspiracy is ultimately successful with the birth of Damien, Lawrence can be blamed for the many innocent lives lost throughout the Omen franchise. No tears are shed when Margaret stabs him in the neck.
I think you can cut the last sentence, as we usually don’t include the fates of the C Ms in writeups.
Also, I was really expecting an Exorcist: Beliver-level stinker, but First Omen was an A-grade film.
Edited by nwotyzal on Apr 23rd 2024 at 8:17:31 AM
Since this is my very first CM proposition, I decided to offer a candidate from an obscure, cheap stealth game from 2005, Cold War.
What is the work?
Cold War is a 2005 stealth-action game developed by the Czech developer Mindware Studios and published by DreamCatcher Games. Essentially a Splinter Cell clone that takes place in a Commie Land. The difference is, the protagonist is a civilian reporter/journalist/paparazzi so there's more emphasis on sneaking and crafting tools than fighting.
Who is the candidate?
Colonel Barinsky (first name unknown) is the treacherous chief of the KGB who plots to oust the President of the Soviet Union from power and establish a Stalinist dictatorship.
What he has done?
- Barinsky's initial plan to "convince" the President to resign is first threatened when two people - the whistleblower scientist Sonya Yakovleva, and head of the Presidential Guard Grushkov who rightly suspected that Barinsky is up to something - arrange a secret meeting with the President at the Mausoleum. So he decides to have them framed for high treason and sentenced to death.
- Barinsky lures the protagonist, American journalist Matthew Carter, to the meeting place and swaps his camera with an X-ray device that can blow up whatever it's pointed at. After Carter takes the bait and accidentally "shoots" the fire extinguisher and explodes it close to the President, Barinsky convinces the President that Carter is a CIA assassin with a deadly super-weapon and that Grushkov and Yakovleva are traitors who lured him into a trap.
- Although Barinsky politely tries to convince Carter to surrender, it's clear that he wants to have the latter sentenced to death, along with Grushkov and Yakovleva.
- He also drugged and tortured Sonya Yakovleva for information, later trying to coerce her to activate the nuclear bombs he's been secretly making in the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
- Barinsky had coerced the staff of Chernobyl nuclear power plant into making A-bombs for him under threats of sending workers and their families to the Gulag.
- After Barinsky learns from his spies that the President is on his way to Chernobyl to conduct an inspection, Barinsky decides that Sonya is no longer useful and orders her death.
- He ambushes Sonya Yakovleva and forces her to have Carter bring the atomic bombs back to him so he could blackmail the President with them.
- His most heinous action is to stage the Chernobyl disaster, both to kill the President and cover his tracks, as well as generate sympathy from Western nations to consolidate his power. Barinsky clearly didn't care about the radioactive fallout that would contaminate the region for years to come, or about the lives of innocent workers and his own men.
- Sonya Yakovleva, a loyal companion who commited herself to stopping Barinsky's plans, was one of the people who perished in the disaster, thus adding a personal touch to the aforementioned atrocity.
- When Barinsky learns that the President had survived, he abandons all pretense and starts an outright military coup. He has his men take the President hostage to force him to "voluntarily" resign on camera.
- After Carter frees the President and takes him to the Mausoleum, Barinsky sends his Spetsnaz forces to storm the Mausoleum and kill the President outright.
- Once the attempt on the President's life is foiled and it is clear that Barinsky is backed into a corner, his final evil act is to try and blow up Moscow with an atomic bomb and kill millions of innocent people out of nothing but pure spite.
Mitigating Qualities/Freudian Excuse
None. Barinsky is a power-hungry, vicious Renegade Russian and a would-be dictator, whose claims of wanting to bring Russia back to greatness ring hollow. His attempt to kill millions of Moscow's citizens with an atomic bomb perfectly shows his psychotic, selfish, "if I can't have this country, no one will" mentality. He was also content with letting his Spetsnaz subordinates die in the Chernobyl disaster, making him a Bad Boss as well.
Heinous Standard
He's the Big Bad of the game and all other minor antagonists serve directly under him, so he doesn't have to compete with anyone else. Outside of wanting to frame and kill the protagonist Carter and his two closest allies, Barinsky is responsible for the casualties of the Chernobyl disaster, not to mention the attempted nuclear annihilation of Moscow, which would have a death toll in the millions had it not been stopped.
Final Verdict
An easy yes in my eyes.
Edited by Thermal7 on Apr 24th 2024 at 1:51:21 AM
Not the Eye
Barinsky
Good first EP.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to Barinsky.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Did Bob Garrison or the Makkapitew get enough votes?
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
I think garrison got barely any votes either way
Mak got only like one or two upvotes
In honor of Akira Toriyama
How long do write-ups typically stay on the drafts page?
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Until I get them off; usually a few days at most. They go to the actual CM page Monday or so.
Incidentally, I assume Damien still keeps?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]")
Lai Shen
I’m plotting my schemes wherever I go! They’re perfect in every way…