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
...Phenomenal
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
for Barinsky, Eric, and Razanak.
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
for Ursula and Aziz.
RIP Toriyama
I'll have two villains from Civil War (2024) coming in the next few hours.
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
Probably gonna bow out until then, because I really do not want to even think about politics or anything related right now.
Razanak.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I think you can, yeah.
Just a starting content creator
Thanks! Here are the two quotes I found.
I personally like the second one of those.
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Can we just chop the last sentence? It feels a little unnecessary.
Fanfiction proponent
I want to say yes to Aziz, but unless he has a high, or implied body count, I am just going to say . Sorry.
RIP Toriyama
Ok, let's tackle it:
What's the work?
Civil War (2024) is the newest flick by Alex Garland, set in a war-torn America that has been devastated by—you guessed it—civil war. With the country divided up into fragments of states that have formed alliances, the film follows a small group of reporters—Lee, Joel, Sammy and their new, idealistic recruit Jessie—as they begin a cross-country trip to make it to Washington, D.C. and interview the President before secessionist forces lay siege to the capital.
Who is the President? What has he done?
- Played by Nick Offerman of all people, the unnamed President is the Big Bad of the film and the ultimate spark that lead to the current civil war. A fascist who took office several years ago, the President quickly went about seizing power as he disbanded the FBI and dissolved chunks of the Constitution, leaving himself able to force a third, extended term in office.
- As parts of America began seceding from the country to fight against the growing dictatorship, the President ordered violent crackdowns on protests; used airstrikes on civilian targets; and declared the press an enemy to his rule, with journalists ordered to be shot dead by his forces.
- By the modern day, the President and his rivals of the "Western Forces" secession group have torn apart the country in their warring. Though the President regularly gets on TV or radio and declares his "ultimate victory" is approaching and that he will wipe out all those loyal to the WF, it's a lie: his battle stations have fallen apart, his generals have turned on him, and the WF is closing in on the White House to kill the President.
- As the WF, followed by our journalist gang, begin laying siege to Washington, the President cowardly sends out a caravan of Secret Service agents and a woman—implied to be either the First Lady or a staff member—to serve as meat shield decoys who are gunned down by the WF. The President sends out another staff member to try to surrender, but the ruthless WF are having none of it and continue their assault, in which the President's trigger-happy agents gun down Lee despite her just being a journalist.
- The President's men are overwhelmed and the President himself dragged out from his hiding place in the Oval Office, to which a pissed-off, disgusted Joel asks for a quote from the President. The President snivels out "Don't let them kill me!", to which Joel just smirks and remarks "Yeah. That'll do." as the WF execute the President where he lays.
Mitigating features?
None, he's depicted as a wannabe dictator and compared directly to Mussolini, Gaddafi, etc. While he only has a few scenes, they show him as an arrogant braggart fascist in public, and a snivelling coward when the chips are down.
Heinousness?
It's a dark world and very much an Evil vs. Evil stage when it comes to the President vs the WF, but at the end of the day, the WF is A Lighter Shade of Black and the President is played as the worst person in the film. It's heavily indicated that his fascist seizing of power is what caused the current civil war, or at least worsened it, and he has engaged in aerial bombing of civilian populations; the immediate execution of journalists; the general brutal put-down of any protestors while waging war against the WF for seceding. Even at the end he sends out an unarmed woman and his service agents to die as decoys and his cruel forces try to murder the journalists just as willingly as they do the WF.
The film plays up the fact that it's a brutal war and no side is "good", but the President is the closest thing to an ultimate evil that we get, and he's worse than the WF (who, notably, are very protective of the innocent journalists in their care).
Final Verdict?
Keep for President Evil Ron Swanson!
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Lizzid people!
President.
for President Swanson.
President Swanson
the President
Ok having started an effortpost in the MB thread related to a Fallout related fan-project and in light of the Fallout TV show and its' CM/MB effortposts happening tomorrow, here is an CM effortpost from the HOI4 Old World Blues mod I have been wanting to get to for so long but wasn't able to.
What is the Work?
Old World Blues is a popular Hearts of Iron IV Game Mod set in the Fallout universe, or rather, an alternate universe version of it. The player can play as any of the West Coast factions in addition to a plethora of original ones. The map has since expanded to Texas and the central United States. Our candidate shows up in the Oklahoma storyline, which shifts Fallout from the traditional post-apocalyptic fare to a Cosmic Horror Story set in motion by our candidate.
Who is our Candidate?
The Putrescent Mother is an extradimensional Eldritch Abomination brought forward into the material plane before the bombs fell through attempts by American scientists to control the powers of the mind, experimenting on a woman named "V", who turned into a mutant known as a "Pskyer" that developed immortality through these experiments. When the bombs fell, "V" and her cellmates consolidated power around the wasteland of Oklahoma as a group known as the "Chained Choir", using the power of song to reanimate the dead and mind control many. They were soon contacted by a Dark Entity known as the Putrescent Mother, whom manipulated them into constructing a body for her; in return V will be granted power over all humanity. Under the guidance of the Putrescent Mother, "V" and her immortal cellmates are turned into tools of destruction, raising Zombies and subjecting thousands to Mind Control in its' efforts to destroy the Wasteland.
What does she do?
Slowly "V" will fall more and more into the Mother's influence. She can muster her conscience, follow the advice of some of her inmates when they muster conscience, and prevent the Mother's influence from being overbearing, or succumb to it, allowing it to such as using the zombies and the mind control thralls to be used as slave labor even if they die in the mines that they are to dig for resources and openly desecrating the graves of the dead. Under her influence, V overruns the Last Patrol and uses the bodies of their soldiers to stitch together a host body for the Mother. Multiple bodies are dismembered in order to create this host body from V's conquests.
If V succumbs to the will of the Mother, a year after V started expanding her influence into Oklahoma, she will be influenced into reviving the Putrescent Mother. The Psykers exert their influence even further on their subjects and enthrall them further into mental slavery. All of their zombies and thralls possessed by the will of the mother are to be sent to work indefinitely without rest; and more focuses in the focus trees later on indicate that they will also be sent to fight if necessary against the enemies of the Chained Choir. Any humans that are caught are turned into pawns for the amusements of the Psykers.
After overrunning Oklahoma, the Mother's body is prepared, and a horrific ballad is being sung by the Psykers to ensure that the Mother is brought into this world. When the Mother is brought into this world, V expected to be rewarded.....only for the Mother to kill her and literally pull her and her body apart at the seams. The rest of V's Choir is also killed as well. From there the Mother overruns the various groups in post-apocalyptic Texas from Super Mutants to Brotherhood Members to Todd Howard's expy, while setting up radio stations broadcasting the songs of discord of the Chained Choir across the entire wasteland, potentially making people all across what was the US fall under her thrall.
With Texas overrun, the Mother's hunger for more bodies and souls only grows, and plans to move into Mexico, and eventually consume the entire world....
Redeeming Qualities?
Ha.
Other Mitigating Factors?
While the Mother is a literal supernatural entity out of place in the Fallout universe, there is nothing telling us they have no agency.
Heinousness Standard?
Now the world of Old World Blues is a nasty place with all sorts of messed up. To put it into perspective, Vulpes Inculta isn't a CM in this universe. There are lot of really horrible groups and groups implied to be horrible running around the Wasteland. The NCR, traditionally the nicest faction in the franchise may go fascist under Cassandra Moore or turn into a totally unequal oligarchy, the Enclave has multiple ways to regain power, Communist remnants set up 1984-style regimes in the distant North and one of the Communist remnants embody the very worst of the totalitarian left and every nasty stereotype about the tankie left, Super Mutants have ways to rebuild their power and Caesar's Legion can potentially have a even worse successor.
With all that said? I'd say the Mother is perhaps the worst villain in the story. Yes, in a world with luddite Roman larpers, extremely totalitarian chapters of the Brotherhood of Steel, Communists that think 1984 is an instruction manual, and a branch of the government that wants to destroy all of humanity. She manipulates a teenage girl that is stuck in one age with promises of power, only to graphically kill her(yes V's death is extremely graphic and described in excruciating detail). The zombification and mind control, the consigning of thousands to A Fate Worse Than Death—either being forced to exist forever in a state of servitude with no rest or having their bodies and spirits stitched together for the Mother's own body is quite unique for the mod and even arguably the Fallout franchise in general.
The only character who might be worse is the Secretary of the Interior, potentially the mysterious leader of what's left of the Enclave after their defeat in Fallout 2 and heavily implied to be committed to the total destruction of humanity. However, the storyline has not gotten to the Midwest yet and while his agents commit genocide on Ghouls and all other "non-pure humans" every time they come into power and depopulate vast swaths of the Wasteland to drain them of resources for the Secretary of the Interior's "Great Work"—which is commonly thought of as likely another attempt to destroy the human race over genetic purism via FEV. However he can't qualify because he is wayyy too mysterious and Chicago and the Midwest storyline isn't on the map yet, we don't even know if he wants to unleash the FEV, or if he is even human. He could be an AI that got activated to fulfill Richardson's genocidal dictates to the bitter end with the Fall of the oil rig, which raises questions about his moral agency. Overall he won’t likely be EPd for years.
Anderson and the Enclave Purists from Enclave Reborn are a non-factor here as the mod isn't canon to OWB and its' events aren't really taken into consideration for OWB(ie: Granite is a much darker character in OWB unless Grant Hayes takes over the NCR and pardons all Enclave memebers) and thus they don't even need to be taken into consideration.
Also, it is heavily unlikely the events of the Fallout Tv series, while canon for the Fallout franchise, will be canonized for this mod in any capacity so The Mother dosen't need to compete with the true masterminds of the Great War: Vault-Tec(whose leadership I'm maybe sure you might see tomorrow on this thread), and the Mother dosen't even have nukes so that is a moot point resources-wise.
Verdict
Very easy and long awaited . Honestly surprised it took me this long to do this EP.
Edited by xie323 on Apr 25th 2024 at 5:21:17 AM
PS: General Ward in '"America Rising 2'', which was the topic around my MB effortpost(Colonel Whitehill, the "saner" alternative to him), isn't a CM. Despite his genocidal plans he is genuinely Affably Evil and misses his long dead family.
Hopefully I set the tone for tomorrow’s eps!
Edited by xie323 on Apr 24th 2024 at 7:36:22 AM
President Swanson
for the Putrescent Mother.
Insert title here
President Swanson, Putrescent Mother
Gentle Laborer
President and Mother
Also, according to Word of God the TV show is confirmed to be canon within the Fallout universe.
Edited by TheMadCr0w on Apr 24th 2024 at 11:45:31 AM
Shin Megami Tensei IV
The Putrescent Mother
Dagded Dujardin
President and Mother
It is, but it isn’t canon to OWB. Neither OWB nor Enclave Reborn have any plans to canonize it in their interpretation of Fallout lore.
Edited by xie323 on Apr 24th 2024 at 7:55:04 AM
Just a starting content creator
Yes to the President and Mother. Anymore thoughts on these two quotes?
Ultimate Moral Compass
President Offerman and Mother
I should have a Civil War EP myself that I’ll be posting tomorrow (thanks, Rav!)
"No running in the halls!"
to the POTUS, Mother
Here's my Palpatine writeup:
What If The Clone Army Did NOT Have Inhibitor Chips For Order 66 (link
): Palpatine, after finding that Order 66 was sabotaged and the clone troopers are coming to arrest him, slaughters every one that comes after him on his way to escape. Initiating his contingency plan, he arrives at the Republic Cruiser carrying an imprisoned Darth Maul, and releases him, killing Ahsoka on their way out. Killing Maul once introduced to the Shadow Collective to become their new leader, Palpatine attacks Kamino to try to destroy the cloning facilities. Confronted by a redeemed Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Plo Koon, Palpatine is finally killed when a wave from a crashed ship distracts him.