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
RIP Toriyama
Yes to the Borg Queen. Great work, Overlord!
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Lies and Violence!
The Borg Queen sounds like a yes.
What's the work?
Mister Miracle: The Great Escape is a DC graphic novel out to answer one question. What would the New Gods be like... in a High School AU?
Okay, no, that's an exaggeration. Scott Free, the titular Miracle Man, is the son of Highfather of New Genesis, exchanged with Darkseid's own son as part of a truce. Darkseid, seeking to utterly break Scott, sent him to Apokolips' Goodness Academy, where he now schemes to escape with his friends before graduation—in other words, before they're sent off to die in war, to die for Darkseid. Oh, and also racism exists on Apokolips, which... I mean, now that I think about it, why the hell wouldn't it? It's fucking Apokolips.
Anyway, three guesses who we're looking at.
...Okay, that may be a mistake to say. Darkseid doesn't make a physical appearance here. With that caveat, now take three guess at who we're looking at.
Who is Granny Goodness?
Granny Goodness was the daughter of an Apokoliptan noble and a black woman. Shunned and abandoned for her skin color, Granny resolved to earn Darkseid's favor and ascend to his inner circle so she could take revenge on both her father and his family. Bleaching her skin white, she became the headmaster of the academy and set about training the next generation of Darkseid's servants.
Granny, as usual, is the absolute worst. Her Female Furies—reimagined as essentially murderous hall monitors—brutalize the other students at their leisure. She avoids killing any children of important high-ranking nobles, showering them with blatant classist favoritism, but doesn't hesitate to beat them when they get out of line. And, of course, her favorite form of "love" is the X-Pit—a massive maze of death traps and monsters that not even her own Furies are safe from should they fail her. Scott is the only person in history to have ever survived and escaped the pit.
As Scott repeatedly tries to escape the academy with the help of Himon, a janitor at the school, Granny recruits her newest Fury in Big Barda, sending her to befriend Scott and learn who is helping him in his continued escape attempts. Once they learn of Himon, Granny turns Scott's friends against him by telling them he doesn't have any plans to break them out—he wants to, but he's totally improvising everything as he goes along and hasn't gotten that far yet—and prepares to "graduate" them early, assigning them (along with Himon's young granddaughter) to "minesweeper" duty on the front lines of Darkseid's wars.
Fortunately, Barda has become genuinely attached to Scott and wants to help him escape. Slightly less fortunately, the prince of Apokolips, Kalibak, wants to kill Scott because of some prophecy. Scott challenges Kalibak to single combat for his friends' safety, with the arena chosen being a nightmare maze controlled by Granny that summons Scott's worst fears. Scott steals Kalibak's Mother Box in the chaos and fakes his death, while Barda gets his friends and Himon's granddaughter in one place for them to Boom Tube out.
Mitigating factors?
Her backstory might be sympathetic... if she wasn't enforcing the same rigid, racist system that saw her abandoned. Other than that? Nah, it's the usual Granny Goodness rapsheet. Child abuse and murder on a massive scale, aimed at ultimately sending thousands of soldiers into the meat grinder of Darkseid's conquest.
Works for me.
I think the old Gideon can work as well, with a few sentence tweaks
Ultimate Moral Compass
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Borg Queen and GG
The Draftsman of Doom
Yes to Queen and Granny.
I caught us a rabbit today.
What is the work?
CSI: NY is an American Police Procedural.
"Down the Rabbit Hole" and "DOA for a Day" are the fifth and fifteenth episodes respectively of the fourth season.
The NY crime lab find themselves face to face with a mysterious assassin who has killed some high profile people.
Who is Suspect X and what has she done?
Suspect X is an enigmatic assassin who takes pleasure in murdering people for money, using a "recursive spider" to find keywords that lead her to potential clients.
In order to meet up with Congressman Phillip Devane and assassinate him, X tortures and murders Cheryl Miller before stealing her virtual avatar.
When Cheryl's online beau, Johnny O'Dell, discovers that Cheryl's avatar, Venus, is being impersonated online, X murders him to silence him.
During an online confrontation with Detective Mac Taylor, X displays her trophy room before infecting the Crime Lab's computers with a virus.
Still posing as Venus, X makes her way to Devane's New York apartment, where she murders him before the NYPD can interfere.
While attempting to escape, X is discovered by Taylor, so she takes a hostage, shooting him so that the NYPD is distracted and she can escape.
To fake her own death two months later, X captures Katie Mann, a woman with a similar appearance to her, and keeps Katie as a captive to the point of dehydration, muscular atrophy, infection, and iron deficiency; subjects her to prolonged torture in squalid conditions; and having her client-turned-accomplice, disgraced plastic surgeon Dr. Joseph Kirkbaum, change Katie's appearance to resemble X. Subsequently, X kills Katie with a knife to the head.
When she realises that her deception has been discovered, X sends a virtual taunt to the NYPD in a cosplay club, watching them by hijacking the club's cameras.
Upon realising that her accomplice has been compromised, X murders Kirkbaum and replaces his eye with a camera.
While posing as an audio technician, X plants a gun in a speaker in the hopes of assassinating another target, NYC Criminal Justice Co-ordinator Jordan Gates.
Baited into meeting a decoy client, X attempts to flee when she notices an officer (unrelated to the sting) headed in her direction, fleeing to a construction site before dying in a firefight with Taylor.
Mitigating Factors?
For the most part, X is just an antisocial and bloodthirsty assassin.
There is one line which gives me pause:
"Pulling the trigger is like... taking a deep breath of fresh air. Seeing that last... little speck of light in their eyes. Then when it fades... I don't know. I believe they're going to a better place."
Normally, I'd take this as some sort of twisted benevolence. However, all the other interactions X has with the NYPD suggest that regardless of whatever she believes happens after her victims die, she still sees assassination and murder for hire as a game, and she doesn't actually care about what happens to her victims after they die; it comes off more as an expression of nihilism to me, but I could be wrong.
The following virtual message she sends (with pictures of six past victims in the background no less) comes off as particularly malicious and mocking.
"Detectives; the hunt for me is futile. Why are you wasting your time chasing shadows like a nightmare that won't go away? I will continue to evolve while you and your cop friends chase their tails and mop up blood."
Heinousness (or "How bad is she")?
X uses a "recursive spider program" to look through several people's emails for potential clients using several key words, as opposed to having the clients seek her out, or being a subordinate to another criminal on a consistent basis. As a result
◊, she has targeted dozens
◊ of people
◊ at least, if her virtual trophy room
◊ is even remotely an indication
◊. Offscreen villainy should not be an issue.
X also tortures Cheryl Miller and kills her for her virtual avatar.
Finally, X holds Katie Mann captive for months until Katie's muscles atrophy, bed sores develop, and she suffers from an iron deficiency and dehydration, all for the purpose of having a disgraced plastic surgeon client, Dr. Joseph Kirkbaum, make Katie look like X in order to fake her own death. If the "continue to evolve" comment (along with her avatar changing appearance multiple times while the message plays) is any indication, before Kirkbaum ends up being discovered as her accomplice, she initially intends to further kill and replace in order to cover her tracks. This is a particularly cruel flourish for a candidate I might initially have been reticent to discuss, and I don't think anyone else forces a victim to get plastic surgery in squalid conditions in order for the perp to fake their own death. Heck, I don’t even think we currently have a trope for exactly what she does to poor Katie.
Other assassins include:
- Daniel Pritchard, a dirty cop moonlighting as an enforcer for a mobster and another dirty cop.
- Jeremy Sikes, who makes his 5 hits look like robberies.
- Mala Noche's Memmo Fiero, who in addition to being directly and indirectly responsible for at least three different gang shootings which endangered multiple people, shot Marisol Delko-Caine.
Other competitors from a torture standpoint:
- Leon Sneller, who performs inhumane amateur medical experiments on his captives after shaving and branding them. These experiments include crude surgeries, deliberate infection, and starvation.
- Gina Sinclair, who sexually abuses little girls with glass bottles, among other things.
- Wesley Habeck, who treats undocumented migrants like animals, holding them in squalid conditions before releasing them and having them hunted.
She may not endanger as many people onscreen as David Wilson and his extortionist gang, or even Neal Cooper and his rental truck, but based on the trophy room, I would argue that she more than establishes a pattern. (It’s not like Neal is going anywhere, mind you; he does have the highest attempted body count as far as submerged vehicles are concerned.) In my opinion, she blows Wilson and his gang out of the water as far as modus operandi and successful body count are concerned.
X apparently has less resources than most of these competitors (aside from Neal). Make of that what you will.
Verdict?
Worthy of discussion, at least.
Each of the episodes are $3.49 on iTunes if anyone wishes to see for themselves.
Edited by SkyCat32 on May 3rd 2023 at 1:41:51 PM
Feels good, don't it?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
x3: I disagree. A few tweaks won't be enough to disregard the inherent
awkwardness in the original writeup's final sentence. Why is there "Rise to even greater power" when nobody back in 2022 could have had known of Gideon's endgame?
Original entry:
- The first two sentences go on for 3 lines and repeat Mandalore's fall for longer than necessary, which is why I excised some of it while also incorporating the part where Gideon lies about sparing the Mandalorarian people, and I end up at less than 2.5 lines.
The proposed rewrite (no more revisions as far as I am concerned):
Insert title here
Switching to ![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
Choi.
....Phenomenal
to Rodrigo, Borg, and Granny.
CSI tends to have some very yikes baddies, but that torture-and-plastic-surgery scheme makes my skin crawl just reading it so I'll lean for X as well.
Dagded Dujardin
Drigo, Borg and GG
The wifi here sucks
Yes to Granny and X
With the Borg Queen, how strong of an indication is there that she's the same person between her appearances? I'm not super familiar with how the Borg work but it's a bit weird how she dies and returns so many times since she specifically mentions that she was assimilated (meaning the returning ones could just be different assimilated people)
Also still not feeling the Gideon rewrite.
Edited by papyru30 on May 3rd 2023 at 11:56:57 AM
Hope your prepared for an unforgettable luncheon
Lord of Space
- Whiskers: Mr. Whiskers is a twisted lunatic and the source of all the troubles in the game. Committing a mass murder in a village, Mr. Whiskers forces the survivors and people he kidnapped all around the world into a game where he sadistically watches as they struggle to survive. When two of his victims - William Johnson and Wally MacGrath - attempt to escape with a boat, Mr. Whiskers kills them at the last second to take away their hope, sadistically stating how his game can never be won.
Mr.
Having just finished the story of LEGO City Undercover, I’ll have to say to Forrest Blackwell. Sure, he’s nasty by the standards of the game, but there are a couple of things that keep him from qualifying. One, like the other characters in the game, he has plenty of comedic moments, like his trouble with ‘compupers,’ and the fact that his method of ‘torturing’ Professor Kowalski… was to have him tickled with a feather, so I don’t think he was taken completely seriously by the narrative. Two, as bad as attempting to fry LEGO City was, other LEGO game villains were far greater threats, like how Loki attempted to use Galactus to destroy two worlds, or how Darkseid intended to enslave the universe via the Anti-Life Equation, or how Lord Vortech threatened the fabric of the entire multiverse. Compared to all of that, one city is way too small.
Edited by GamerBoy18 on May 3rd 2023 at 11:40:31 AM
First, the feather was Rex's doing, not Blackwell's, and he was still taken mostly serious by the narrative, especially with his attempt to destroy Lego City. Second, Lego City Undercover takes place in a very different continuity from those games and thus has its own heinous standard. And third, no offense, but I think this was something you should've brought to the clean up thread cause voting ended a LONG time.
Edited by Michealthehero21 on May 3rd 2023 at 11:55:56 AM
to Rodrigo, Borg, Granny, Walter, and X
Edited by G-Editor on May 4th 2023 at 9:18:51 PM
Yes to Rodrigo, the Borg Queen, Grann Goodness and X.
Not the Eye
To Londra, Rodrigo, Borg Queen, GRANNY GOODNESS, X,
The Ultimate Lifeform
to Granny and Borg Queen!
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
What G said.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Sorry for being nit-picky by the EP for Roy Gottlieb got several things wrong and I felt the need to correct it.
Vault 11 was another one of Vault-Tec social experiments with only the Overseer (as usually) knowing about the true nature of the vault. When the first Overseer revealed that they had to sacrifice someone every year because otherwise the vault would kill everyone they selected the Overseer as the first victim. Presumably even the original Overseer didn’t know that the this was a lie because otherwise he most likely would’ve tried to save his own life and reveal the truth.
As a result it became tradition to elected an Overseer each year and have him/her be the sacrificed at the end of his or her term. This went on for about 200 years and resulting in the formation of voting blocs. Among them the Justice Bloc had the most members and could basically decided who would be the next sacrifice.
Their leader Roy and several members of the Justice Bloc then forced a women named Kate to have sex with them, under the threat of nominating her husband as overseer. Then they nominated him anyways. When Kate learnt about this, she pulled off a pretty clever Batman Gambit: She killed several members of the Justice Bloc and let herself get arrested. As murder, she easily won the election as Overseer. And as her first act after she won, she abolished the voting system and instead declared that the next victim/overseer would be randomly chosen by a computer program.
The Justice Bloc panicked when they realized that they were no longer save and had lost most of their influence. They armed themselves and attempted to gain control of the Vault’s most important areas like the water supply. Their goals was basically to threaten the rest of the Vault in submission assuming the other faction wouldn’t have to guts to stand up against them. They we’re wrong! After the end of a bloody civil war only five people remained.
The survivors decided that they were sick of all of this and told the computer that they would no longer sacrifice people to the vault. Cue a voice message declaring that they had passed the test by choosing the moral high ground and that they wouldn’t be killed. Out of shame four of the remaining survivors committed suicide, while it’s implied that the fifth one left the Vault with his current whereabouts being unknown.
So do I think Roy Gottlieb is bad enough? I’m not sure. He did force Kate to sleep with him and rest of the Bloc’s leadership and is the one who suggested that Justice Bloc takes over the Vault by force. But the heinous standard in the Fallout Franchise is pretty high so personally I’m going to Abstain.
Bye
Walter Londra, Rodrigo Lecoste, Borg Queen, Granny Goodness, Suspect X
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
@Gideon writeup: I feel like this is devolving into nitpicking at this point. Usually if someone commits more crimes in the future, I just add a couple more sentences and tack on the additional info.
@NTG: Again, nitpicking (which admittedly you yourself acknowledge). Even with these additional details, it's hard to look past the "I made this woman have sex with dozens of men for a full month, then murdered her husband for a petty reason" bit. I'm fine with Roy staying.
for Granny Goodness and Suspect X.
Goku Black
suspect X, granny goodness, Roderigo and The Borg Queen.
I can handle the write up for Londra; I just need to check out the rules on doing it.
BTW, how do I find who had something reserved? I searched (with the search engine) the thread for that and didn't find it. I didn't, however, go to every page after I took back my original post.
True, but rape and sexual slavery isn’t that uncommon in Fallout. Cook-Cook, Clanden and Saint James all have raped multiple people. The former two even murdered them. Fallout Tactics also had at least two rape victims of Raider gangs. Not to mention the Omerta in New Vegas who also use drugs and violence to keep their prostitutes in line and prevent them from quitting.
So I don’t think Roy stands out among all these people and groups.
Edited by NTG on May 4th 2023 at 4:15:46 AM
Maybe have Lighty take a crack at Moff Gideon's rewrite since he did both the EP and prior entry?
Of all her appearances, I only ever saw the Borg Queen myself in First Contact. Matters not though. Based on both that and the EP,![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]")
to the one who says "I am the Borg".
So much like John Wick, that's one CM in the movies to the multiple MBs in the movies?
How many for Alice Krige now? How many for Director Jonathan Frakes? Who's the other actress?
People often go back and forth as to whether or not Wrath of Khan is the best or First Contact is and with good reason too.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on May 3rd 2023 at 9:22:25 AM