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.
- Don't delete an EP unless you intend to swiftly repost it. We know that there are reasons why you might want to delete an EP, especially if it's being downvoted - rejection is hard, even in a low-stakes environment like this. However, deleting it renders the current discussion null and void, makes it impossible to reference the discussion in the future and can confuse tropers who didn't read it before the deletion. If the issue is temporary (such as formatting problems or a post getting overlooked as the thread moves on), then deleting and quickly reposting the EP is a valid option, but to fully retract an EP, please use the [[strike:]] markup instead.
- 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 Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2024 at 3:13:36 PM
Starro
Basically Rockshow’s abusive stepfather was just something briefly mentioned and has no importance in the current storyline, nor does it give a reason for his hatred of Faunus. Overall it’s just something briefly mentioned that has no relevance in the story besides a minor background detail. And it definitely doesn’t come close to excusing him building a concentration camp for Faunus he and his followers kidnapped for slave labor, and the fact that he shows no love or empathy for his own children.
Edited by Phantom25 on Apr 18th 2023 at 6:00:04 AM
So, imma abstain on this guy from the...visual novel thing I never heard of till now.
Looking into it the canon seems gray enough that I don't really think he has to compete with anyone from the show or creates any problems with the current keepers.
But uh, that excuse still sounds a little worrying so I'm just gonna try finding bits of this to check that out...
EDIT:Alright so I can't find a translation for this thing? It's an untranslated "Japan exclusive" thing.
From what the wiki says it seems to just be something Ozpin brings up. So...maybe he could be good there if it's not given weight?
And just to be sure, could I ask, he never brings up his also evil son being killed by the White Fang(In front of the family at that according to the wiki) at all? Cause that seems like another strange detail to have.
Edited by Snoketrope on Apr 18th 2023 at 8:41:54 AM
Bow to the PrototypeHe never brings up his son, also his children never knew he practiced slavery at that point. The youngest daughter Iona who witnessed her brother killed joined her fathers group believing Faunus were evil, but eventually betrayed him when she realized that he was enslaving Faunus, which was why the White Fang was after them.
Yes to Forsyth, Rockshow, and Starro.
- Magic: The Gathering: Gix was the first ever compleated when he sacrificed his humanity and swore allegiance to Yawgmoth and became the Praetor of Phyrexia. First introduced as a diseased and murderous exile, Gix became Yawgmoth's right hand when he was cured and aided his master in destroying the Thran empire. The Praetor would be cast out of Dominaria with his master and returned millennia later to corrupt the artificer Mishra and escalate the brutal war with his brother Urza. His manipulations to weaken Dominaria directly led to an apocalyptic blast that would cause an early Ice Age and destroy most of the plane's civilizations. When a side effect prevented Phyrexia from invading, Gix was tortured until he could prove himself by horrifically mentally breaking humanoids into his sleeper agents that he used to spread chaos and war. Ultimately killed by Urza, Gix was the harbinger of all the horrors Phyrexia would unleash on the Multiverse.
Edited by LoreDeluxe on Apr 18th 2023 at 11:15:21 AM
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.Yes to Starro!
Gonna reserve the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 upcoming DLC Future Redeemed. Also droppin my res for TRON: Identity cuz it ain't for me lol so free game.
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!Has the person who proposed a character from PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo posted again? If not, i would like to propose at least one more of this work.
Due to unfortunate events, i will continue to exist until further notice. (also i'm fluid now)Alright let's do this:
What is the work?
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the animated film of the titular franchise. It features as an origin story for the titular bros who end up in the Mushroom Kingdom and the conflict led from the Big Bad himself, Bowser, who's a lot more unsavoury than his usual videogame portrayal.
Who is Bowser and what has he done?
The king of the koopas, Bowser is a vicious tyrant without any care of the wellbeing of his soldiers, a stark contrast to his usual game portrayal. First introduced arriving at the Penguin Kingdom, Bowser demands they open the gate or be destroyed. After the penguin's hilariously weak efforts to stop him, Bowser then casually uses his fire breath to destroy the kingdom. Exploring the ruins of the kingdom, Bowser discovers the Power Star within, boasting how no one will be able to stop him.
When Luigi gets brought to Bowser after being captured, he interrogates him about his connection to Mario and then has him locked up saying he'll kill him later to spite Mario. Bowser then ambushes the heroes when he discovers they had recruited the Kongs to help them, seemingly killing Mario and Donkey Kong and imprisoning the rest of the heroes except for Peach and Toad who retreat back to the Mushroom Kingdom and attempt to evacuate it. Bowser then arrives at the kingdom and asks Peach to marry him, having Kamek use magic to torture Toad to make her comply. At the wedding itself, Bowser tries to have all of his prisoners sacrificed by dipping them into lava before Peach encases him in ice.
Breaking free of the ice, Bowser, infuriated, attempts to just fully nuke the Mushroom Kingdom out of revenge of being rejected. Although Mario manages to push the missile into the warp zone, the shockwave causes Bowser's castle and everyone within to be teleported to Brooklyn. During the climatic battle Bowser attempts to kill the heroes and seemingly burns Mario and Luigi alive before it's revealed the brothers had managed to absorb the stars power and become invincible. Refusing to lose, Bowser has his minions attempt to kill the brothers but fail due to their invincibility.
Bowser is defeated when gets punched through his castle and force fed a mini-mushroom, shrinking him and having him imprisoned. Later appearing in the mid-credits scene, Bowser is yelled at a toad to shut up before they shut the door, trapping him in darkness. With a sequel most likely happening who knows how the King of the Koopas will return?
Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Alright lets get the easy ones out the way:
Freudian Excuse? No lol
Redeeming factors? No lol. You might think he genuinely likes Peach... except he outright says if she doesn't comply, he'd destroy the Mushroom Kingdom... which he attempts to do when she rejects him. No care for his troops either or Kamek.
Now the big hurdle... the comedy aspect. Bowser is comedic and has a lot of jokes surrounding him and his actions with Jack Black being a fucking delight to watch. However that revolves around him as a character as a Card Carrying Villain. The mass sacrifice via lava admittedly plays out as a bit of Black Comedy with how he casually says it but the film does show the prisoners' cages being brought above a pool of lava so it's not some offhand comment. The part that isn't played for laughs as far as the film goes? When he loses it and attempts to nuke the Mushroom Kingdom. Those two bits are the parts that help push him out from say being a comedically irredeemable character like Jack Horner.
His treatment of his soldiers is played for laughs like Horner but when Bowser fights the heroes, it isn't and he seemingly burns the brothers alive with a smug smile.
Heinous Standard
Current Big Bad so sets it and with attempting to burn the prisoners in lava and attempting to nuke the kingdom? Handily pass for a kids animated film tbh. If he reappears in any sequels and he's outheinoused or any issues pop up then he can be disqualified easily but for now he is the worst character in the film.
Final Verdict?
Personally unsure but I happily welcome discussion for this one!
What's wrong D-16? Rise up!I do have to say, the first and last of those scenes sound like ones where the joke is on him, so I don't see it detracting from his heinousness.
As for me, I'll abstain, since I heard his defeat is comedic but not much besides that, and am unsure if his singing in peaches is intentionally hammy to be a parody of love songs or not.
Edited by Purgatoryisof2 on Apr 19th 2023 at 7:46:44 AM
I have been waiting for this.
Bowser is a simp. Like a massive simp. It’s not just that he lusts after Peach as an object or whatever. The simple simp genuinely has romantic feelings for like the simp that he is. In fact, he simply does not understand that she will reject his simpiness for being evil. And in the end, he’s to much of a simp to even hate Peach after her rejection.
Simp.
Edited by SatoshiBakura on Apr 19th 2023 at 7:49:01 AM
Bowser. This goes a tad too far from being just Laughably Evil.
Edited by Mr-ex777 on Apr 19th 2023 at 7:50:26 PM
If it wasn't for "Peaches" I'd consider it — especially since he's been at war with the other kingdoms for some time — long enough for Peach to have ample reason to despise him and his desire to marry her to come completely out of left field (even his own troops are dumbstruck). He does try to kill her after she rejects him, but he's also genuinely dismayed and confused as to why she'd be horrified by a mass-sacrifice.
Oh, and here's the song in question — or at least the music video for it:
A sad
for Bowser.
I'm someone who thinks Jack Horner still counts (this is not a relitigation post). And I don't think Bowser counts; there's way too many undignified and comedic moments at his expense. And I think that's my point. If you don't think Jack counts, then Bowser definitely shouldn't either. He has all of Jack's problems and then some.
Bowser.
