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
Ultimate Moral Compass
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Blackbeard
Blackbeard
Looking at the link in that post, Scraggle said he didn't propose this guy at the time because his portrayal was too tonally inconsistent, so I'd like to ask for clarification on what changed.
I have finally returned to only say one thing. On the discussion dates, it says Beau Is Afraid was supposed to be discussed the 5th.
RIP Toriyama
Scrags mentioned one aspect—the bit involving a child who is expected to marry and is confused about the whole thing—was silly, and while yes there's some lightheartedness to the sequence, it's also just further establishing how fucked Manland is that a youngster is going to be expected to marry and use his new bride to get children for the land, and the episode otherwise establishes how dreadful a fate the women have awaiting them.
We talked it over on the side after I watched it and both came to the conclusion that Blackbeard himself and the overall plan is played seriously enough, and is bad enough, for him to pass.
Edited by Ravok on May 16th 2023 at 8:01:48 AM
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Yes to Blackbeard and a big yes to the Mother
From a world where trees shoot Force Lightning.
Aye aye to Blackbeard!
Gahmah's Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/GahmahRaan
...Phenomenal
for Gordondorf, Mother, Orb, and Blackbeard.
(Edit: "Gordondorf" is an amazing autocorrect and I'm not fixing it)
Edited by TheGrayFox on May 16th 2023 at 8:36:58 AM
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
Write-up done.
- COFFINWOOD, by Aaron Beardsell: Dr. Richard Payne is a Serial Killer masquerading as a dentist. Having developed a fixation with torture, Dr. Payne began drugging, kidnapping, and torturing several women to death; he would later use the victims' skin, eyes, and bones to create furniture for his office. Having already killed at least twelve women, Dr. Payne targets Claire Hadley after she reveals she has no relatives. Once she's inside his office, Dr. Payne wastes no time sedating her and attempting to kill her.
Goedlitz
Lies and Violence!
Yes to Ganon, the mother, orb, and Blackbeard.
What's the work?
Pact is the second novel by Wildbow, author if the infamously dark web serial Worm. Whereas Worm had a sci-fi take on superheroes, Pact instead focused on a world of hidden magic. Of course, it was just as depressing and horrifying. On top of the universe literally conspiring against the main character, Blake, there's also a massive pantheon of Lovecraftian demons that are slowly but surely eating away at existence. Their very being is poison to reality, and it is an inevitable that, one day, they will end it all.
That's all far out of Blake's control. He's more concerned with surviving another day. Unfortunately, he's really bad at that. Finding himself indebted to the Lord of Toronto, an Anthropomorphic Personification of Conquest, Blake is charged with finding and binding several monsters throughout the city if he wants to live. One of them?
Who is the Hyena?
A monstrous goblin, so horrific and violent it crosses the line into an outright demon, the Hyena has haunted the world before the Americas were colonized. It has attacked and mauled hundreds of victims throughout the centuries, but it never eats them—instead, it mutilates their very souls. Said souls are left in agonizing pain as they are claimed by the Hyena, and dragged along with it wherever it decides to hunt, lashing out in maddening suffering at anyone and anything nearby.
Having set up shop in a forest near Toronto with its legions of enslaved ghosts, fairies, and assorted ethereal beings, the Hyena's latest target is a boy named Evan. Evan, thankfully, doesn't get claimed by the Hyena; he instead dies of exposure/starvation while running from the goblin. Unfortunately, the Hyena is so scary it scares away even the local psychopomps, leaving Evan's ghost in the woods. The Hyena takes glee in continuing the ghost's torment for eternity, hunting it down day after day.
Blake, upon encountering the goblin, manages to outwit it with Evan's help and weakens it, forcing it to submit to a binding contract lest he leave it for its slaves to take their revenge. The Hyena reluctantly accepts and shapeshifts into the form of a sword—one with spikes poking out of the handle, making it as uncomfortable as possible for Blake to wield. Blake occasionally lets the goblin out to fight once he declares war on Conquest, but once the Hyena is killed it reverts back to its sword form, which Blake uses as his primary weapon for the rest of the series.
Heinous enough?
For a mid-tier goblin? No question. The Hyena has wracked up a massive body count over the centuries, leaving its victims forever enslaved and mutilated to cause further suffering wherever it goes. The only threats worse than it are the demons and their human collaborators who poison reality with their very existence; with the Hyena's low status, it's more than bad enough to stand out among the lesser covens and witch hunters who don't get up to nearly as much, merely feuding over power with each other.
Mitigating factors?
Goblins are shown to be both sapient and have agency in this setting; one side story showcases a disgusting yet weirdly heartfelt interspecies relationship between a human and a goblin, and the sequel introduces several as helpful supporting characters. The Hyena is more animalistic than most, but it's clearly shown to be intelligent and willingly vicious.
Verdict?
Easy yes. There should be one more from this series, but that may take a bit. The setting runs on the rule that magical beings can't lie; this one is incredibly nice in the first half of the book, but the implication is that she was using Exact Words to screw with people. I need to double-check.
The Hyena
Edited by Arawn999 on May 16th 2023 at 9:36:05 AM
Yes to Da Foe!Ryuk, Subspace Ganondorf (surprised nobody thought of him sooner, I guess people thought Tabuu eclipsed him, or maybe thought his Pragmatic Villainy in joining the heroes to take down Tabuu was a redeeming trait?), the Orb, Hyena, and Blackbeard. Assuming the POTC Blackbeard wasn't cut I think that's our third Blackbeard.
Edited by Klavice on May 16th 2023 at 11:31:31 AM
Fair warning: I can get pretty emotional and take things too seriously.
Not the Eye
to Blackbeard and Hyena
Collector of Worlds
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Okay, having read the trimmed (thanks for that) Mother EP...yes to her. She does all that just because her sister got picked for Jedi training over her? Yikes. Yes to her.
Yes to the Orb; Blackbeard (this is a KIDS' show???); Hyena.
Edited by ACW on May 17th 2023 at 5:36:38 AM
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Yes to Ganon, Mother, Orb, Blackbeard and Hyena
Writeups:
Dr. Sebastian Quaid is a chief scientist at La Bastille prison, who regularly engages in torturing countless prisoners and using them as test subjects of his experiments, which causes many of them to either die or mutate into feral Leapers. Taking the most active role in the Reconversion Project, Quaid experimented on thousands of Leapers to turn them into obedient slaves, as well as specifically draining the minds of prisoners to turn them into Leapers and repeat the process and turn them into slaves as well. Defying the orders of Scylla Cartier-Wells to stop the Reconversion Project, Quaid openly desires to destroy the "individuality" of the city and use the newly created army of mind broken Leapers for his own purposes.
Madame Astrid Voorhees is the head of La Bastille prison, who keeps it as a harsh brutal hellhole, where Dr. Sebastian Quaid experiments on countless of prisoners and the guards freely abuse them, causing many to die or be turned into feral Leapers. Regularly engaging in torturing prisoners for fun, Madame also took the memories of all prisoners to keep them docile, which left many of them in a state of constant pain and suffering. When Nilin breaks into La Bastille prison, Madame activated the Brain Drainer in an effort to destroy her, not caring that the machine destroyed minds of any prisoner caught in it's sight.
Yes to the Mother and Blackbeard there!
Ryuk, Blackbeard, Orb, Mother, Hyena
Edited by Snowy66 on May 17th 2023 at 4:36:16 AM
To Blackbeard and the Hyena
Ultimate Moral Compass
Mother and Hyena
SO, my newest:
What's the work?
The Salt Grows Heavy is a novella by writer Cassandra Khaw. A dark fairytale, the heroine is a nameless mermaid, a powerful being who was ensnared by a prince. Far from a fairy tale romance, she was enslaved, kept as a bound victim, mutilated and tortured to be the compliant bride. Then their children devoured the kingdom and consumed the prince and all his people. The mermaid is the only survivor along with her protector and only friend: a mysterious plague doctor who leads her from the ruins where they come across a strange village with murderous children.
Ruled by these three: the Three Saints.
Who are the Saints?
A trio of mysterious men with insatiable curiosity. Mad scientists who seek to test and create the limits of all human experience and body. Long ago, they found the plague doctor when they were just a child, lost in the ruins of a forgotten place and offered to take them with them in exchange for...assitance. They made of the Plague Doctor an experiment of endless torture, infecting them with diseases to study the effects, cutting them open, until the Plague Doctor was immortal and not quite human. At last escaping their tormentors, the Plague Doctor finds them again...
And oh, is it bad. In the wreckage of the kingdom, they've set up shop with taken or orphaned children, experimenting on them and eroding their morality into monstrous creatures who torture and kill one another in vile games. We see one child carved apart and put back together in experiments that seem to hold no value but the cruelty.
The Plague Doctor can't let it go and resolves to stop them to save the kids, though the mermaid believes that this is folly and they're too far gone. The Plague Doctor is tortured, and mortally wounded, though saved by the mermaid who tears apart and eats one of the Saints alive, only for him to reconstitute himself and rejoin the others.
The final fight result in the mermaid regaining her old power, in her voice....and unleashes it all in a primal storm they can't fight and burns them away for all their crimes
Mitigating issues?
Hell. No. The Saints are wholly interchangeable with no individuality between them. They function as one being split into three bodies, and their crimes are abominable and monstrous. They set themselves up as gods over their victims and when they're confronted by the Plague Doctor who realizes they don't remember them (The Plague Doctor, btw, is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns)...their one response?
"We don't remember meat."
"Meat."
"Meat."
Conclusion?
Easy keeper
Ok, I'm sure some of us remember about 2 months back when Scraggle discussed
the series Maddigan's Quest, a short-lived New Zealand fantasy series that had some dark content. He's already gotten up the Big Bad Nennog and a pair of one-shot villains, but there's 2 other one-shots he graciously recommended me. Let's start with...
Who is Blackbeard? What has he done?
Mitigating features?
None, he's got no care for Manland as a society except what money it brings him and is a smug asshole.
Heinousness?
So the series is dark, for sure, but Blackbeard is a special breed of fucked for a kid's show. He's, in no uncertain terms, rounding up groups of women to sell them off to Manland to be used as unwilling wives and breeders, suggestively kissing at the women to further imply their coming fates. The show, of course, never says "rape", but the dialogue and characters make it damn clear that it's a horrible fate and what's gonna happen to the women is a special level of what the hell.
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.