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
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Whispers, Gant, Dracula, Merk, Josiah, Richard and The Bone Lady
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Yes to Merk; Josiah (quality over quantity); Marlowe (work has a page, albeit one I needed to index); abstain on Bone Lady.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
to Frankling Goldberg, Elijah DePortes, Dr. Milton Bailey Brandt, Robert Grant, Count Dracula, Officer Merk, Josiah Graham and Richard Marlowe.
Abstain on Tengil and Lady Bone Demon
Scorpion, Josiah, and Dracula
Edited by rosewood47 on Jul 18th 2023 at 5:02:45 AM
Goku Black
Tbh I think I'll go with no for bone demon (is She still called Baigujing here ?). That does seem like she was being sincere in that final line and it was more a sad warning than trying to mock him.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
to Tengil, the Sound duo, Whispers, Gant, Dracula, Merk, Josiah, Richard and The Bone Lady
Edited by G-Editor on Jul 17th 2023 at 11:15:44 PM
Merk, Dracula, Josiah (jesus), Richard Marlowe, Scorpion
Tengil. Having read the book, he's pretty easily bad enough.
....Phenomenal
for Whispers, Gant, Tengil, Dracula, Merk, Josiah, and Richard.
Abstaining on Bone Lady.
There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.
Lies and Violence!
I said all my thoughts on the Bone Demon in the post; her behavior up until that point makes it just as likely to be mockery (if with some genuine feeling behind it) as sympathy, at least to me. I don't have much else to say that isn't repeating the same stuff (no Baigujing, she's just the Lady Bone Demon).
Here's one that should be much less contentious:
What's the work?
Lumberjanes is a wonderful comic series created by ND Stevenson, described by the trope page as "Gravity Falls meets Buffy." At a summer camp, a group of young girls go on wacky adventures with the magic and monsters inhabiting the surrounding woods, trained by the camp director to survive and protect against the many threats in the night.
For the most part, the series is pretty quirky and lighthearted, with the worst antagonists being one of the Lumberjanes' mostly offscreen homophobic parents. But then there's the final arc.
What is the Grey?
An intelligent blob of Grey Goo, alternatively called "The Grey" and "The Voice." Its origins are unknown, but it's clearly a dreaded Ancient Evil, which has long been locked away behind a magical waterfall.
Making its proper debut about halfway through the series, the Grey's first plot is to trick one of the Lumberjanes into a ritual to slow down time within the camp grounds so that the summer will last longer. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of producing waves of "time bubbles" that rapidly age or deage whatever they touch... and also prematurely awakens the giant stone sentry charged with guarding the Grey's prison, which proceeds to nearly trample several of the campers and level the forest until they manage to convey to it that it's up early.
The Grey stays away for a while after that until the final arc, where it unveils the true depths of its malevolence. Making a deal with a local trickster spirit, it arranges for the river feeding into its waterfall prison to be dammed, freeing itself. However, when the trickster gleefully thinks about the mischief they can accomplish, the Grey merely muses that "mischief" is far too chaotic for its tastes. It prefers for things to be a bit more... orderly. With that, it possesses the trickster and unleashes its Grey Goo. One of the Lumberjanes' yeti friends is immediately infected, and quickly dissolves into a formless grey clump. The Grey begins spreading itself across the entire forest, enveloping every living thing it can find.
Fortunately, the Lumberjanes are able to use their connection to the magic of the forest/the power of friendship to drive back the goo and heal those it has assimilated. The Grey is reduced to a single pebble, which is quickly captured by the stone sentry and sealed away once more.
Mitigating factors?
Knight of Cerebus Final Boss threatening to reduce everything in the forest to grey nothing, with implicit designs of moving on to other realms. Easily the worst in the comic. As for motives? It claims its making everything neat and orderly, but everyone pretty quickly sums this up as just wanting to make everything like itself, which the Grey doesn't bother denying.
Short and sweet, easy yes.
In other news, because I hate myself, I'm looking into Gotham Knights. From what I've heard, there should be a good keeper here, and a few for MB.
Not the Eye
to Dracula, Merk, Gant, Josiah, Whispers & Marlowe
abstain on Tengil, Bone Saw Lady and especially the So F candidates, while they are no doubt horrible enough I'll have to invole the 'work is too tasteless/offensive' clause.
Grey Goop
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Sure to Grey.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
The Emperor of Evil!
Okay on Tengil, he condemns people to work to death as slaves (killed a slave for insulting him), or how he sends his dragon to kill everyone at the valley if I recall, I say sure to him.
Sure to Grey as well
Josiah (A disgusting pedophile) and Marlowe (A disgusting satanist).
Abstain on Bone Lady for now.
Classy, Refined, Unstable
The Grey
I'll get to writeups once I'm back home.
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
Showtime!
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
To lady Bone Demon for now
Goku Black
grey
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
to the Grey.
Okay I've got a slightly interesting one here. A while back someone did an unapproved write up for this candidate, and as I was a fan of the show I decided to check them out. I concluded that they weren't heinous enough. However, on reflection I may have been to haste to dismiss them, so I've decided to give them a proper effort post just for the sake of putting the matter to bed once and for all.
Now Midsomer Murders is a series telling the many tales of the picturesque villages of Midsomer county, all of which are really hotbeds of petty rivalries, blood feuds, corruption and secrets, that boil over into multiple murders.
Season 14's The Night Of the Stag see's Chief Inspector John Barnaby and Sergeant Jones brought to the village of Midsomer Abbas to investigate the disappearance a revenues and customs man, arriving coincidently upon the Mayfair celebration of its friendship with neighbouring village Midsomer Herne. Only for the festivities to be interrupted by a dead body being found in a vat of Cider.
I give you our candidate today Samuel Quested.
Who Is he:
Played by Warren Clarke on the surface Samuel Quested is seemingly just Midsomer Abbas charming and jovial Pub Landlord and local alderman, an influential and respected individual, well known for his investment within the local communities of the valley.
In reality, Quested is a ruthless and egotistical Small-Town Tyrant who only cares about increasing his own power, and woe betide anyone who dares challenge it.
What Does he Do:
Maintaining his control through a combination of charm, local influence and violence, Quested has his goons Smudgepot and Wilberforce threaten anyone who goes against the accepted order, going out of his way to ensure the valley stays as close knit and isolationist as he can, to the point that just about everyone is terrified to talk against Quested, with the implication they were responsible for half blinding the kindly elderly Beekeeper Byron Street.
He also had his daughter Alice get a job as secretary to Anthony Devereux (owner of the local Cider Mill that employs nearly everyone in the valley) so she could spy upon him. However, discovering that the visiting revue agent Peter Slim had fallen in love with and married a native of Hern Esme Baker, Quested was enraged at her for daring to marry outside the Valley.
Seeing it as a threat to his power and an opportunity to complete his control, he had Alice lure Peter out into the woods one night where he and his goons were waiting. Bludgeoning Peter with Devereux’s wading stick, despite being dazed Peter managed to escape. Thus the three of them chased through the woods with dogs. Arriving in the orchard, out of pure sadism Quested had his goons drag the terrified man into an apple picker. Then he personally used it to grasp him by the neck and viciously shake Peter until his neck shattered in multiple places, all whilst Quested laughed his head off.
Having his goons dump Peter’s body in a vat of Deverux’s cider, Quested pressed the blood stained staff into the unconscious Deverux’s hand (having collapsed in the corner of Quested Pub after he pined him with drink earlier in the night). The effect of which making numerous people who drank the cider violently (though not seriously) sick.
Then Quested had the staff planted back in the wood, pointing the attention for the murder directly towards Devereux (matters not helped by the fact that Peter had been on to Devereux for revenue fraud.
Approaching his counterpart in Herne Will Green, Quested used the damage the the murder had on the community as an argument for resurrecting the long dead rite of the Stag (where the men of the village would go over the neighbouring village to sleep the women, set up in the middle ages to ensure genetic diversity), claiming it would restore the communities spirits and managing to finally sell it by promising Green that he could have Alice (whom he knew he'd been lusting after for years).
Putting the next stage of the plan into action, Quested approached Devereux in prison assuring he could provide him with eighteen witnesses that would put him in the clear of the murder, but only on the condition that he effectively signed over the mill to him, thus between it and controlling the Stag would solidify Quested’s control over the valley.
Everything ready he began preparations for the nights Stag by getting everyone heavily drunk. When the kindly Reverent Conrad Walker threatened to go to the police, Quested dispatched his goons who slashed him to death with scythes within his own church. Then leading the drunken party into Herne, Quested dispatched them to go about their business.
However, as well as increasing his power and control, Quested had an ulterior motive to resurrecting the rite. Using the Stag as a distraction he broke into Esme Baker’s home (knocking her mother whom he seduced to gain entry aside and locking her out), intending to rape her for daring to marry Peter.
Thankfully Barnaby and Jones arrived in time and were able to drag Quested off Esme. Dragging him out, Quested managed to rally the villagers into a mob to restrain Jones and ordered Smugpot to shoot them both. However, Barnaby managed to turn the crowd against Quested by revealing the true extent of his crimes and used the confusion to retake control of the situation.
Quested smugly boasted to his crimes claiming no one would dare testify, only for Alice to confirm it was all true the effect breaking his hold on the villagers. Arrested along with his goons Quested tried to claim that even in prison his influence would still be felt, only for the disappearing crowd to silence him.
Any Freudian Excuse or Redeeming Traits:
Nothing that holds up. Quested does a good job as presenting himself as charming man who just wants to protect his village and its traditions. But its made clear that all he cares about is protecting his own control over it, and will dispatch anyone who gets in his way. Barnaby flat out compares him to a cult leader.
He likewise tries to present himself as a loving father to Alice, but when the mask slips it becomes clear she’s just another pawn to him. Complete with him literally setting her up to get raped just to guarantee his plans complete and even encouraging it to carry on when he no longer needs Green, for seemingly no reason other his own amusement and belief in the twisted tradition.
Quested likewise doesn’t particularly care for his own goons, even laughing his head off at one point when one of them gets punched in the face by the angry husband whose wife he was after.
Heinous Standard:
Now this is the sticking point. Midsomer Murders does have a relatively high heinous standard (albeit only for a Cozy Mystery) with two to three murders per episode is more or less the norm.
However, rape is a completely different matter. A large part of why I originally dismissed Quested was the poster making the Stag out as a mass rape ritual, when in the episode its presented more as a weird and somewhat disturbing but still mostly consensual sex game.
But even ignoring the darker implications that could have gone, Quested still stands out as pretty much the only attempted rapist and the only rape organiser in the entire series. And whilst the rest of the Stag is dubious his dealings with Green are transparently set up as rape with him deliberately not telling Alice so she couldn’t get away (she does get away, but that’s purely cause Green is incompetent), and overall presented quite nightmarishly compared to the rest of the Stag.
Of all the killers in the entire show their are only two other's who are also rapist (of which one is Sir Michael Fields who’s already a keeper, whilst the other might be worth a re-examination themselves, having three victims). Of rapists in general their so few that I can only think one other one within the entire series.
This coupled with his other crimes (in particular his murder of Peter Slim is acknowledged by everyone as an utterly nightmarishly painful way to die and well beyond this series standard quick methods) and the sheer pettiness of his motivation it might just be enough to push Quested over the line.
Conclusion:
Honestly not sure about Quested. He’s nastier than normal and has several standout crimes, but whether it’s enough to push him over the line is up to you.
So what do you think?
Edited by MGD107 on Jul 19th 2023 at 12:47:27 PM
Lizzid people!
Okay, yes for Josiah; Dracula; Marlowe.
Yes to Count Dracula, Merk, Gant, Josiah, Whispers, Marlowe, the Grey.
No to Bone Demon.
Abstain on Tengil.
I am not going to touch the Sound of Freedom characters.
Anyway, I am going to propose the final Black Panther story villain, this one is a familiar face. The main villain from the short story The Return of the Queen by Tananarive Due.
Who is Moses Magnum? What has he done?
Moses Magnum is the former dictator of the nation of Canaan, a neighbor of Wakanda, who is also an old enemy of the Black Panther. Despite being deposed from Canaan, Moses Magnum has become more powerful than ever, an alliance between Magnum and the monstrous mutant Apocalypse has resulted in Moses Magnum gaining the power to control the Earth (causing Earthquakes and such). Moses Magnum uses his powers to launch a devastating drought in Canaan. When Black Panther goes to Canaan to investigate, Moses Magnum attacks him and attempts to bury him alive. Moses Magnum has been using the drought to destabilize Canaan so he can use it as a staging ground to attack Wakanda.
Black Panther is saved by the Dora Milaje and Black Panther's family summons Black Panther's ex-wife Storm to help him. Black Panther and Storm attack Moses Magnum's compound in Canaan and learn he is planning to use a sonic weapon and a small army of mercs to defeat Wakanda's military and conquer the country and take its Vibranium resources. Storm and Black Panther manage to defeat Moses Magnum and his army and capture him.
Is heinous by the standard of the work?
That description may seem drab, but Moses Magnum caused a drought in a poor African country, just to use it as a staging ground to attack Wakanda.
This drought is presented in a harsh light, Black Panther says the land of Canaan looks dead. Rain instantly evaporates and crops are failing in Canaan, as well as water being sucked up by the ground. I think this goes beyond mere Fridge Horror. Moses Magnum is actively endangering millions of people, just to satisfy his greed.
So even though he has a bigger attempted body count than the other villains I mentioned, his Earth-moving powers give him an advantage the others do not have, so I think the other villains can remain.
Any Freudian Excuse or other redeeming qualities?
He has about the same amount of redeeming qualities as his 616 counterpart, which is none.
Final Verdict?
Keep him.
Moses Magnum (love that name btw; very badass)
I’m… unsure on Lady Bone Demon. Yes she refuses to admit her faults and her words taunt MK thought next season, but her face esspecaly on the pain part simply gives me little to much of Alas, Poor Villain vibes and geniune sincerity (that scene it literaly only reason why I didn’t propose her when bingo watching the show).
Edited by EmperorGeode on Jul 18th 2023 at 1:01:47 AM