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
Goku Black
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights: Eleanor is a demonic mechanical being who serves as the true mastermind of the events of the series. A monstrous Serial Killer who feeds off the agony of her victims, Eleanor is responsible for murdering dozens of victims in grotesque manners. In her first appearance in the series, Elenaor mutilates and murders a young girl named Sarah who had helped her to steal her organic body parts. The mastermind to many of the grisly murders to occur in the series, Eleanor has decapitated a teenage girl through an animitronic, driven a woman insane and to death and traps the soul of a deceased boy so he can experience his organs being removed. Each of her victims' souls is trapped in her ball pit where they're forced to experience their horrific fates over and over again. Reviving and empowering child serial murderer Willaim Afton, Eleanor is responsible for him causing mass death and chaos through the series and helps empower him to become an amalgamation monster of animatronics that threatens the entire city. Ultimately, Eleanor intends to gain the power of "Remmant", planning to use it to superempower herself and devastate the planet.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
I assume this goes after the current Afton in a Five Nights at Freddy's tree?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Goku Black
Yeah.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
As much as I love to give John a ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
i can’t. As Tyk said that Heinous standard in AC is really high (we have a serial baby torturer and a guy who bakes people into pies with little resources). With that I have to give John a ![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
(good effort though)
Best Smile
Bully, Shelob, Griffith, Danielle, Slan, Uncle Graham, Julian, Dybbuk.
Scourge, Plankton, John, Detectives.
Lizzid people!
Okay, so Haunted Mansion (2023)...kind of leaning towards no one counting.
The Hatbox Ghost is the main antagonist of the film who gets a good dose of Adaptational Villainy where, in life, he was a wealthy tycoon named Alistair Crump who was known for throwing lavish parties where he'd invite his fellow social elites...and then murders them all burying their bodies deep within his manor. After his servants caught on to his wrongdoing, they decapitate him. From there, the Hatbox Ghost would coerce guests to the Haunted Mansion into forfeiting their souls (i.e. killing themselves) trapping them in the mansion the goal being to accumulate 1000 ghosts to leave the mansion and spread his dark powers to the land of the living. One instance is when he deceives a grieving widow into joining his wife in death and then traps Madame Leota in a crystal ball.
So, while he is a mass murderer in life, and collected 66 spirits in death, the issue was his backstory. While it was more to establish the character, Alistair was disowned by his own father when he cried too much at his mother's funeral. From there, he was shunned by the big cats of the time, so part of the reason why he would kill the social elites he would invite to the parties is his way of getting back at a society that wronged him. But while that would explain his actions in life, I can see the argument that it does not begin to cover his actions as a specter with driving people into killing themselves, and one of his attempted victims, Travis, is a young boy who lost his father, and the Hatbox Ghost has the audacity to pretend to be him. That, and it could be argued that he seemed to embrace being an all-powerful ghost. While he was shunned in life, the Hatbox Ghost does not bring up his mother nor his backstory to justify his actions, but at the same time, he does not subvert the potential care either.
As for anyone else, we get Constance Hatchaway, the notorious black widow who murdered several of her husbands, but, in addition to being a minor character, she also pulls a bit of a Heel–Face Turn when Father Kent convinces the ghosts to fight against Alistair.
Yeah, got to agree Crump flunks due to Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas. And the implication seems to be that Hatchaway was driven mad by Crump even before she died.
Caesar
Yes to Dybbuk, no to the detectives
- Justice League: Warworld: Mongul is a tyrant obsessed with conquering the entire multiverse through use of Warworld, seeking to unlock its full potential and use it as a planet-killer across all dimensions. In the meantime, he boosts its power by imprisoning countless people and trapping them inside terrible fantasies for hundreds of years so that Warworld can feed on their agony. Mongul further clones all of his prisoners to create more puppets meant to do nothing but suffer and die, and he tortures J'onn J'onnz into using his psychic powers to make the prisoners' torments all the more real. When J'onn tries to mount an escape, Mongul plans to torture him to death and broadcast his screams to the prisoners, then attempts to murder his own hired thug Lobo just for speaking out of turn.
Hello. Is it possible to write a Complete Monster with such traits as exceptional willpower, high intelligence and bravery in battle, if they are just played out of pragmatism?
Not the Eye
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Not even pragmatism is needed. Being smart or strong willed aren’t among qualities that would be considered reddeming when it comes to this trope. Same for bravery, there is nothing inherently reddeming in Blood Knight or villain who dosen’t cover in fear when situation dosen’t go their way.
Edited by EmperorGeode on Aug 11th 2023 at 11:30:04 AM
Showtime!
So, I've been relisting to one of my favourite podcasts, and I've got one EP so far out of it.
What is the Work
Wrong Station is a Canadian horror anthology podcast. The podcast frequently explores other genres, including sci-fi horror, dark fantasy, and horror tragedy, with frequent Capitalism Is Bad themes. My candidate is from "Episode 21- The Catcher", which takes place in an unnamed country torn by multiple civil wars in the past, and where professional exorcists called Catchers are regularly called on to deal with restless ghosts, both of which matter to today's candidate.
Who is our Candidate?
The General is the ancestor of the narrator. While alive, the General fought on the side of the first Civil War that supported slavery (it's not a direct Alternate History of our world, but the comparison is obviously to an alternate American Civil War where the South won and there was a second war to abolish slavery), and was infamous for his brutal tactics, at one point having six hundred prisoners of war bayoneted to "save ammunition".
In the present, the General's descendent and the narrator is a Catcher, whose job it is to banish reckless ghosts. While Catchers usually work in groups and rely on the power of those bonds to banish ghosts, the protagonist works alone and is almost entirely isolated from humanity, including his estranged wife and rarely seen (but beloved) son. This backfires on him, when one day he confronts a particularity nasty ghost and, remembering what his mentor taught him about ancestor worship, he calls upon the spirits of his ancestors and gets the General. The General easily dispatches the ghost, but refuses to return to death and escapes into the world. Over the next months, the protagonist sees a rise in mysterious deaths and unsolved murders affecting the descendants of abolitionists, which he knows are the General's doing. He confronts the General at a monument to the six hundred prisoners, where the General denies any familial bonds between them and calls upon the tortured spirits of his victims to kill the catcher, proclaiming that he will "turn the world to his will". The catcher successfully calls upon the spirits of his mentor and parents, but they aren't strong enough until the protagonist accepts what he's known since he first got the news of his son going MIA, and calls upon his ghost. The General banished, the story ends with the protagonist as an old man, having reconciled with his daughter in law, going to tell his grandchildren a ghost story.
Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors? None. The General has no loyalty to anything but his own ideals. While the Catcher's connections with the dead generally rely on affection, they can work on any sort of connection, and the general says "You are no blood of mine" right before trying to murder the protagonist. Some ghosts in the episode are distorted by death (like the murdered girl who was the protagonist's first exorcism for drowning people unrelated to her deaths) The General is devoted to the same brutal ideology in death as he was in life, and all his ghostly killings are based on that.
Heinous Standard The episode mentions one other ghost who was evil in life; the ghost the protagonist ends up summoning the General to deal with is an Elizabeth Bathory-esque murderous noblewoman who murdered her own son, but she's barely a character, and her crimes don't remotely hit "war criminal with hundreds of victims" level.
All the episodes of Wrong Station are disconnected, and none of the ones set outside our world share a setting. Even looking at the other episodes, most of the ones that have distinct villains (instead of just something fucked up happening) have either more personal, smaller-scale villains (Abusive Parents are very common) or characters that are a cog in a larger machine without enough individuality. While the General does have elements of the latter, he's far more characterized than most of them. There are a couple of other villains I'm looking at, but in addition to the complete disconnect in settings all of them are sitting at roughly the General's level of crimes.
Verdict A Yes from me.
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
Not the Eye
to General
Goku Black
general
Bye
Your friendly neighborhood stank goblin
for the General.
to the General
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Yeah to the general.
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
to The General.
Also just saw Heart of Stone and there may be a potential keeper so I think I'll reserve the movie for discussion, since it's only just three days before the discussion for Solar Opposites. If anyone has seen the movie and wants to collab with me on the film or PM on their opinion about candidate (and movie in general) feel free to do so.
Also I was planning to EP someone from Record of Ragnarok after my break from doing Eps (his name is Hajun or Papayas in anime), but after discussing him with Mr-ex777 his actions might be too offscreen for me to be a bit unsure. That said if anyone wants to do Hajun (or anyone else from RoR) then they are free to do so
Edited by G-Editor on Aug 11th 2023 at 4:12:11 AM
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Sure to the general.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Caesar
Yes to the General
What's the work?
Chiefs is a hidden gem of a miniseries, released in '83 and starring the likes of Charlton Heston, Billy Dee Williams, Danny Glover and more. Set in a single small Georgia town named Delano, the series spans decades of the town's history, each Time Skip focusing on the police chief of Delano and their efforts to keep the peace in town. But though racism and hoodlums abound, there's a darker evil lurking in Delano that the whole series revolves around...
Who is Foxy? What has he done?
- Foxy Funderburke (pfffft)—Keith Carradine—is a loner who lives on a large patch of land just outside the city limits of Delano, considered a creepy weirdo by most of the townsfolk. Foxy has a disturbed obsession with power and authority, and so is introduced to the series as a rival to Will Henry Lee for the role of police chief. Foxy is immediately turned down by the townsfolk as a candidate because of his creepiness, and Lee attains role of police chief...and as it turns out, folks' fears are right.
- Foxy is a serial torturer, rapist and killer of young boys. He picks up transient and vagrant boys wandering the highways to "give them a lift", only to bring them back to his isolated home where he dresses himself up as a police officer and subjects the boys to horrid beatings and molestation. When he's done with them, Foxy kills them—sometimes by beating them to death, sometimes by using them as target practice for his rifle—and buries their bodies on his land.
- When Lee begins to suspect Foxy had a hand in a recent disappearance, he investigates his land and finds evidence of a recent burial. Foxy stalks Lee and prepares to shoot him dead to cover up what he knows, only for fate to turn in Foxy's favor and Lee to be shot in a freak accident by a citizen. As Lee lays dying in the hospital, Foxy stands in the crowd and watches as Lee fades away, unable to communicate Foxy's true nature.
- Continuing his crimes for years, Foxy is yet again brought under scrutiny by the latest police chief, absolute asshole Sonny Butts. Though Butts discovers the truth and tries to haul Foxy in, Foxy executes him and hides his body, ensuring that, yet again, he gets away with his crimes.
- In the final Time Skip, Delano's first Black chief of police Tyler Watts finds time between the virulent racism he experiences to look into old case files and find evidence of Foxy's misdeeds, left behind by Butts and Lee. Managing to get a search warrant, Watts and other law enforcement raid Foxy's home, and though they nearly leave without finding anything, one agent trips over the unmarked grave of Sonny Butts, exposing Foxy. Foxy pulls a gun and tries to murder Watts, but is himself gunned down by the many officers on the scene, ending his reign of terror over Delano.
- By the time Foxy's entire land has been dug and dug and dug into? The bodies of at least 43 young boys are found.
Mitigating features?
Nothing. No true motive or reasoning is ever presented for his crimes, he's introduced as "the town weirdo" and doesn't really have development beyond that; he served in WWI where it's implied he gained his desire for authority and power, hence his obsession with police authority, but no tragedy or explanation is given for his cruel, sadistic crimes.
And while his job is as a dog breeder who always has animals on his land, he never shows anything approaching affection for them and solely treats it as a job he does.
Heinousness?
He tortures, rapes and kills over 40 young teenagers, murders police chief Butts (who had it coming in fairness lol) and nearly guns down both Lee and Watts, only thwarted by outside forces.
He's easily the worst in the setting. While Delano is full of racist thugs and KKK jagoffs, very few of them go beyond typical racist assaults...except Butts himself, who is a murderer, multiple attempted rapist, and generally abusive POS. But even then he's not hitting anywhere near dozens of child killings.
WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Foxy
Might have a How to Train Your Dragon character being EP'd sometime soon.
Edited by WetFlannels on Aug 11th 2023 at 8:26:59 PM
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
Goku Black
Funderburke
Gentle Laborer
Foxy
Not the first time I've seen Keith Carradine playing a prolific vagrant killer.
Abstain on John