Cleanup thread: Magnificent Bastard

During the investigation of recent hollers in the Complete Monster thread, it's become apparent to the staff that an insular, unfriendly culture has evolved in the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads that is causing problems.

Specific issues include:

Overzealous hollers on tropers who come into the threads without being familiar with all the rules and traditions of the tropes. And when they are familiar with said rules and traditions, they get accused (with little evidence) of being ban evaders.
A few tropers in the thread habitually engage in snotty, impolite mini-modding. There are also regular complaints about excessive, offtopic "socializing" posts.
Many many thread regulars barely post/edit anywhere else, making the threads look like they are divorced from the rest of TV Tropes.
Following that, there are often complaints about the threads and their regulars violating wiki rules, such as on indexing, crosswicking, example context and example categorization. Some folks are working on resolving the issues, but...
Often moderator action against thread regulars leads to a lot of participants suddenly showing up in the moderation threads to protest and speak on their behalf, like a clique.

It is not a super high level problem, but it has been going on for years and we cannot ignore it any longer. There will be a thread in Wiki Talk to discuss the problem; in the meantime there is a moratorium on further Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard example discussion until we have gotten this sorted out.

Update: The new threads have been made and can be found here:

IMPORTANT: To avoid a holler to the mods, please see here

for the earliest date a work can be discussed, (usually two weeks from the US release), as well as who's reserved discussion.

Why do a cleanup?: This trope definitely exists and has a well documented history of use. That being said, it frequently gets misused to a character who meets one of the components, namely that they are smart, charming while not necessarily even being a villain, or create good plans. While these are components, there is also a certain personality required, not to mention that all of the above are required to be present for a character to be a true Magnificent Bastard. As the trope attracts interest, it unfortunately brings in a lot of misuse and I thought the best way to rectify this would be a Perpetual Cleanup Thread, as is being done and has seen success with Complete Monster.
What makes a Magnificent Bastard: Below is a list of the individual components to make this character. Note that they must all be present, not just some, which has lead to frequent misuse:
- Must be intelligent: Goes without saying, to be a Magnificent Bastard, the character has to be smart in the first place and use their brain to work towards whatever their end goal may be;
- Must be a Bastard: While going overboard in how vile the character is can be detrimental, a key aspect is the Bastard part of the trope, whether the character is an out-and-out antagonist in the work, some manner of Villain Protagonist, or something in between, they at least have some unscrupulous qualities to qualify for this trope;
- Must not be too detestable: Again, there is a ceiling on how bad the character can be before they just become too nefarious, blocking out the Magnificent part of the trope. A genocidal racist or child-raping Sadist aren't going to make the cut;
- Think on their feet: In addition to being a Chessmaster, a Magnificent Bastard, if the character deals with situations in which their initial plan is ruined, has to be able to pull a Xanatos Speed Chess and at least come up with a competent strategy to make up for lost time, otherwise they fail for being unable to think in tough spots;
- Have charm: Even if they don't necessarily make every character they meet fall in love with them and can even be detested by others, the audience has to find an amicable social relation to the character, or they are failing to make the impact required for this trope.
What to do if a character is listed on a page but has not been approved?: They need to be removed, all candidates need to come through the cleanup thread first. The character could well count but they need to be analyzed properly and voted on first.
Do we list Playing With this trope?: No; as a YMMV trope, this cannot be Played With, so we only want examples that are Played Straight.
What do I do if I want a character to be listed as a Magnificent Bastard?: The greatest success Complete Monster saw for its cleanup effort was from the invention of the effort post format, so, borrowing from that, a troper wishing to propose a Magnificent Bastard will create such a post in the following format:
- Begin by describing The work, this will help establish the setting the character is in and for the reader to understand what kind of a scenario they are in;
- Summarize The character's actions, this will provide a listing for readers to understand what they do and how it applies to this trope because charm and lack of smugness are so crucial, this is a good time to be incorporating exactly the flavor of how they operate to explain this;
- List circumstances in which the character must Think on their feet, these are times where a wrench might be thrown in their initial plan and they have to adapt on the spot or even come up with a new scheme all together, this is also a good time to explain how the villain reacts to defeat when they have to face it, a true Magnificent Bastard won't break down into tears at the thought of death, they should have known such a possibility could occur and be able to handle it with more dignity;
- The competition, similar to the Heinous Standard dealt with for a Complete Monster, this section is to deal with how successful the character is in carrying out their plans compared to other characters. While, as a villain, they probably are going to lose in the end, it is good to explain how other characters handle the same situation. There is no exceptionalism case to be made for this trope but explaining the variety helps the reader have a better understanding of the proposal.
How do you know when the character's arc is done so they can be proposed? When their tenure as a villain or antagonist finishes. This could happen in a single Story Arc in an entire work, a single work of a franchise, or the whole series in general. We'll show lenience to Long-Runners with constantly recurring candidates or series with outstanding continuities (ex. comic books), and it's entirely possible to count in a work or two but not in general for a reason like Depending on the Writer.
What about candidates evil because of external sources? Those Made of Evil can qualify if they show enough individuality and tactical acumen — in other words, they have the personality to fulfill the magnificence requirement. Conversely, those brainwashed, especially if they're a better person without it, may fail the individuality aspect and cannot count.
What if they are under orders from a higher-up? Depends. If the boss created the plans down to the letter and the candidate is just following them, sounds like we should discuss the boss instead. However, if the candidate takes creative liberties with the orders, adds their own charm and flair to them, fills in holes in the orders, and/or actively deals with obstacles their boss did not talk about, the candidate shows enough individual thinking to qualify.
What about Character Development? An MB is something a character can develop into... a nice person who plots well might become more morally gray as the work goes on and hits the "Bastard" criteria, thus making them viable. Likewise, a Smug Snake might shed their ego, become more understanding of the threat others pose and gain the personality or "Magnificent" criteria, likewise making them viable. Conversely, a character who looks like this trope might suffer from a Sanity Slippage or just get outed as not being as smart as they thought they were and become incompatible with MB.
Can an MB be a good guy? Not in the conventional sense... it is required they have at least some dubious traits lest they fail the "Bastard" criteria. That being said, a character who pulls a Heel–Face Turn or eventually stops taking villainous actions is still fair game: as there was a point in time where they were both "Magnificent" and a "Bastard" at the same time and they've merely adapted as time goes on. Now... if such a character begins showing other issues (i.e.: becomes prone to freak outs or starts getting outwitted) then they're compromising their Magnificence and will probably be deemed a cut. What's important is stylishly operating while at least for some time being willing to take at best underhanded methods to see a job done. A Heel–Face Turn in itself isn't a disqualifier but they do have to have been "Magnificent" and a "Bastard" at the same time and afterwards can't start slipping on the former front.
What about characters whose stories can take different routes?: When proposing a character in a form of media that has them in multiple story routes. Said character must be consistent with their characteristics in all routes. (ex.: Can't have an example who shows promise on one route yet fails in another.) The only exception is if a later installment of the series confirms the character's actions which made them worth proposing are the canon route.
Is there a timeframe rule like with Complete Monster?: Yes, please wait two weeks until after the work has concluded before proposing a character (again, usually using the North American air date). As is the case with CM, we want to give a reasonable time frame so that everyone interested in seeing the work has done so and can participate in the discussion without having anything spoiled.
What about groups like with Complete Monster?: This is a point of divergence between the two tropes. While CM does not allow for a single entry encompassing more than three characters lest their heinousness for crimes becomes too watered down, with MB as long as they are treated as one "unit" it is acceptable to lump all characters provided they share acts of charm and intelligence.
Can I propose my own work's character as a Magnificent Bastard?: No, this is a YMMV subject and the creator of a content is way too biased to be able to evaluate the criteria we're looking for without a second opinion taking over. That being said, you are more than welcome to encourage someone to consume your creation and if they feel a character counts, are more than welcome to suggest them.

My example/edit has been approved, but the example subpage is locked! How do I get it added?: The moderators do not add examples to locked example subpages in the MagnificentBastard/ namespace directly. Rather, you need to do the edit to a sandbox page that follows the format Sandbox.MagnificentBastard<Name of the example subpage> (e.g for MagnificentBastard.Fullmetal Alchemist it's Sandbox.Magnificent Bastard Fullmetal Alchemist) and on a Friday, ask in the locked pages edit requests thread for the content to be swapped in.

Thread rules

When voting a troper must specify the effort post they're voting on and cannot merely vote on "Everything I missed" as in the past it has indicated the poster didn't read the effort post and is guessing instead of analyzing.

Resolved items

In general, a character listed on this trope is considered "settled". This means they should not be challenged unless information used to list them was incorrect or information was missed in the initial discussion.

However, when re-litigating a candidate, the same rules apply for when they were originally proposed. If they do not have five or more upvotes than downvotes for approval upon a re-litigation, including votes from the initial discussion if they do not change, then they are a cut.

This especially applies to the characters listed below, who have been discussed excessively and repeated attempts to get them listed/cut may result in punitive action for bogging down the thread.

Definitely an MB

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers: Any sadism Darkrai displays is limited in effect thanks to the game's nature and any cowardice which can be inferred about him is Alternative Character Interpretation about his tactical retreats.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Azula's Villainous Breakdown is undone in the sequel comic Smoke & Shadow where she regains her composure and ends up stable and in control enough to count.

Definitely not an MB

South Park: The show's frequent use of vulgar comedy and mean-spirited humor leaves any potential candidates devoid of the dignity or charm to qualify.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 31st 2023 at 4:15:22 AM

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010

#1226: Jun 1st 2018 at 9:48:42 PM

The second Pathfinder candidate I promised.

Who is Druvalia Thrune? What has she done?

Druvalia Thrune is the Big Bad (though not the Final Boss, see below) of the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path. The younger daughter of a lesser branch of Cheliax's ruling House Thrune, Druvalia grew up in the shadow of her prettier older sister and rapist mother and dedicated herself to ferreting out other's secrets. When an attempt at blackmailing her mother went wrong she and her bodyguard/girlfriend Valeria found themselves banished to the military academy. Druvalia enrolled in the Imperial Navy upon her graduation and became the youngest admiral in Cheliax at the age of 32. Aware that she's seen as having gained her position through nepotism, Druvalia seeks to make a reputation no one can deny.

When Captain Barnabas Harrigan of the Free Captains of the Shackles falls into her hands, Druvalia sees her chance and turns Harrigan, sending him back to the Shackles as a spy. With the aid of her great-uncle, Ezaliah, who has a personal grudge against Shackles pirate ruler Hurricane King Kerdak Bonefist, Druvalia assembles a private armada, and cuts a deal with the archdevil Geryon to guide her fleet through the Eye of Abengo, the permanent hurricane that stops Cheliax from crushing the Shackles at will. In exchange, Geryon gets the soul of whichever of Ezaliah or Druvalia dies first; each assumes it will be the other for different reasons.

Since it's hard to hide the gathering of a fleet, rumours reach the Shackles that a Chelish invasion is imminent. When Free Captain Tessa Fairwind begins sniffing around for clues, Druvalia has every member of Cheliax's spy ring within the Shackles killed; the players will find only confusing clues that might point to Cheliax, but could just as easily lead them astray—Druvalia ran the ring through the neighbouring nation of Nidal and numerous other proxies. Harrigan, with Druvalia's permission, sets in motion a plan to humiliate the PCs and throw suspicion on Free Captain and Chelish expatriate Arronax Endymion. Even if the players foil the plot proper (an act of sabotage against the ships of those Free Captains visiting their harbour) they will still likely suspect Arronax. Druvalia doubles down on this plan, sending a team of infiltrators to slander Arronax to his own people and draw further attention away from Harrigan.

Harrigan eventually launches a private assault on the players, using ships and marines loaned to him by Druvalia. Assuming the players win (and if GM reports are anything to go by they can definitely lose), they will uncover Harrigan's treachery, and have their first meeting with Druvalia by way of scrying magic. Druvalia invites the players to join her service and act as magistrates for the Shackles when her conquest is over. She then blows up the scying device, which can injure or even kill the players. With Harrigan gone, Druvalia sets sail for the Shackles herself aboard the Abrogail's Fury with an armada at her back.

The players have to convince the other Free Captains to sail out to meet Druvalia, in the face of Kerdak Bonefist's refusal to believe a threat is even coming. Depending on how many days it takes the players to assemble their own fleet and sail out to meet her, Druvalia advances at a set pace, sacking ports and destroying the fleets of individual Free Captains as she goes; delay too long and you'll face her in the harbour of Port Peril, Shackles capital. The battle against her forces can easily go either way—again, if GM testimony is anything to go by it often goes in her favour—and in the end the players will either board her ship as victors or teleport onto it in a desperate attempt to stop her from winning. Either way, Druvalia refuses to surrender and, barring a fluke accident, will die fighting alongside Valeria.

What is her competition like? How does she perform against them?

Druvalia's the Big Bad of the Adventure Path, with all of the problems the players facing stemming either directly or indirectly from her actions—they first become pirates because Harrigan press gangs them to replace men he lost when Druvalia captured him, and her plan to capture the Shackles drives the entire plot. Harrigan, it's worth mentioning, is a dangerous antagonist in his own right and physically more powerful than Druvalia, yet is entirely subordinated to her designs.

The other villain of note in the AP is Hurricane King Kerdak Bonefist, and he's more of an obstruction than a villain, holding the players up through petty jealousy, and otherwise harassing them. While he serves as the Final Boss of the Adventure this is not because of anything he has done—rather, after repelling Druvalia's invasion, the players overthrow Bonefist for failing to prevent her from getting this far, meaning that even their conflict with him is the result of Druvalia's decisions.

Is she a Chessmaster? A Manipulative Bastard? Is she capable of thinking on her feet?

Druvalia's invasion has been in the works for months, with Harrigan laying the groundwork for the eventual arrival of her fleet. She played on her great-uncle's personal enmity with Bonefist (for stealing his elixir of youth, twice) to get him to back her, and holds Harrigan's life in her hands, forcing the once fearsome pirate to bend to her will. When the plan risks being uncovered Druvalia does not hesitate to liquidate all of her agents and begin a disinformation campaign aimed at a major enemy of Cheliax, and should the players perform well against her in battle she abuses her contract with Geryon to summon diabolic reinforcements to the player's ship to destroy it and them.

How much of a Bastard is she? Does she have redeeming features? Is she capable of being charismatic?

Druvalia is a devil-worshiping militarist from an expansionist diabolist empire that keeps most of the Inner Sea's slavers in business. She uses fear of execution to bend men like Barnabas Harrigan to her will, and intends to put all of Port Peril, including children and non-pirates, to the sword and then the torch when she takes the island. She's also doing all of this to advance her own reputation, rather than out of any real intent of stamping out piracy, and her plan is rooted in making sure her great-uncle's soul, rather than hers, goes to Geryon.

Compared to other members of House Thrune though, she's a saint. Her mother's a rapist, her cousin Queen Abrogail II one of the most hated despots on the continent, her other cousin and Spear Counterpart Barzillai (Big Bad of the Hell's Rebels AP) a lunatic who wants to merge with Cheliax and become one with the land. Druvalia lacks their viciousness, and has the advantage of some actual redeeming features—Psycho Lesbian is not in play here, and her genuine affection for and trust in her rather simple-minded commoner girlfriend Valeria is a bright spot on the admiral's otherwise black record. Personality wise, Druvalia's described as affecting an air of disarming harmlessness, though when she wants to she can be mocking and self-assured; the one piece of pre-written dialogue for her has her congratulate the players for defeating Harrigan, offer them a job, and then blow them a kiss before trying to blow them up, all in one go.

Final verdict?

Druvalia's got the mind of a chess grandmaster and no shortage of audacity. She's the source of all the player's problems, and the greatest threat the Shackles have faced in decades, with the repercussions of her plot serving to bring down the longest reigning Hurricane King in history (38 years) and potentially embroil the Shackles and Cheliax in open hostilities even after she's gone (it's mentioned as one option for Continuing the Campaign). She uses and discards her pieces with ease, while carefully maintaining the loyalty of the few people, like Valeria, who actually matter to her.

Thoughts?

KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]

Shin Megami Tensei IV

#1227: Jun 1st 2018 at 10:16:28 PM

Sounds like a .

Is pretty funny, I propose a Gay candidate and the next one is a Lesbian candidate . Yay for Diversity anyway.

Now. Another candidate...

Setting?

Shin Megami Tensei in general. Or more exactly, the mainline branch. The one featuring the war between Law and Chaos.

However, the bulk of the actions of my candidate are mostly in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. A game set in a Alternate Universe of the original SMT IV where the presence of certain demon manages to change everything.

Oh, and Merkabah and Lucifer are retconned into Smug Snakes rather than Well-Intentioned Extremist. While also “revealing” their actual motivations.

Who is him

Stephen is the original creator of the Demon Summoning Person and the Unwitting Instigator of Doom of the first two games. He is a recurring figure in the franchise, with the exception that while demons and gods are different entities from game to game even if they identify as the same mythological figure, Stephen is always the same.

He serves as the Big Good for the Neutral routes and while always believed to be the most unambiguously good of the Alignment representatives, some revelations in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse showed that Steven had some nasty things himself.

what he had done?

Steven accidentally opened a portal to the demon world, was attacked for a demon and survived with the injuries forcing him to use his iconic wheelchair. He ended up creating the Demon Summoning Program and shared it with many persons as possible, believing that someone would be able to use it to ally himself with demons to avert the obliteration of Tokyo by the upcoming war of the rising Messian and Gaean factions. It fails and the apocalypse happens anyway, with him doing sporadic appearances to help The Protagonist if he chooses to go Neutral.

His role in SMT II is very similar, being an early Mr. Exposition and the Big Good for the Neutral route. Is Absent on SMT III and he reapers in IV, where he serves as the Neutral Big Good again, this time helping to empower a so-called Tokyo Godess to restore the old glory of the city.

Now in SMT IV Apocalypse is when the bastardry begins. Stephen repeats his role as the Big Good in the Neutral focused game, he disguises as Dr. Matsuda and develops measures to counter the Snake Shesha, The Dragon of Krishna and the Divine Powers and erasing the memories of him from everyone except Nanashi after the radar is destroyed. His main motive appears to be the same as IV, restore the Goddess of Tokyo. At the final arc of the story, he appears to Nanashi to explain how humans and gods interact, and shows the party the way to YHVH's Universe, with the intent of defeating the Creator in order to either usher in true freedom for humanity or to pave the way for the new universe depending of the route that the player choose.

Although mysterious and often appearing as the True Neutral figure in the background, Stephen reveals a more ruthless side in his desire to see human potential on Omnicidal Maniac Dagda's route. There he sends the united forces of humanity intentionally to their doom, knowing they would fail and to serve as a lesson to ensure Nanashi will not back down from his current resolve. He also gives multiple warnings to the new Creator who still retains his humanity, Steven is abandoned for the Goddess of Tokyo after warning The Protagonist about The Choosen One Messiahs and the fates that befell Krishna, Lucifer, Merkabah, and YHVH. At the end, Steven vanishes from the IV universe to chase Tokyo-chan, leaving Nanashi to destroy the universe and create his new one.

How smart?

Creator of the demon summoning program, uploaded his soul to the Internet and ultimately, as revealed in IV, he become an actual mythological Buddha, an entity free from the cycle of reincarnation and outside time and space.

Steven is powerful, probably the strongest entity in the entire franchise, over any Top God. But he never uses his powers to reach his goals, he just goes and help the MC giving them clues or opening doors from them. He is able to fake a totally different personality, only erasing the memories from said identity for his own philosophy of Non-Interventionism.

The dude is Stephen Hawking as a sci-fi virtual multiversal boddhisava. He is pretty smart.

Charm and Fan opinion?

Steven always have been a fan-favorite, his design and Nice Guy personality made him a reliable ally in middle in the apocalypse, it helps that Neutral is the most popular route, but Stephen is liked even for non-Neutral fans (like me, I am Law aligned but I liked the guy).

Stephen manages to become a trustable personality in all the games where he appears, being the most reliable person in the games. His love for humanity is pretty notable and while some revelations make it being really ruthless (more info in that later), is genuine.

He always shows friendliness and respect to The Protagonist, with the mild exception of the Villain Protagonist Nanashi on the Massacre route of IV, and even then, Stephen genuinely warns him to become a good creator and avoid being deposed. Stephen is a Nice Guy.

How much of a bastard? Stephen is the Big Good for Neutral players and Neutral have always being a Lighter Side Of Grey compared to Law and Chaos. So it seems like Stephen is a good guy, right? And then SMT IV Apocalypse appeared. A game where Stephen supported Nanashi and Dagda and their plan. A Omnicidal Maniac duo of an angry depressed deity that just want kill himself and stay Deaded Than Dead and a teenager who brainwashed Flynn, the protagonist of IV and the Hero of Tokyo into a manservant, killed all his friends and revived one of them, brainwashed to be his eternal partner.

Stephen manipulates the demon hunters of Tokyo alongside with the Samurai of Mikado and the Gaeans to join together and do a Last Stand against Nanashi…knowing that they would be slaughtered and have no chance of winning. After Nanashi massacres them, Stephen admits that he used them to test his conviction on his plan. That plan? It involves killing the entire world including demons, who wouldn’t reincarnate in the new world, which means that Stephen supported the complete annihilation of several species.

Then, in the DLC where he is the Bonus Boss, is revealed that Stephen did help the Demifiend from Nocturne to get the TDE, by reviving him after he died fighting against Lucifer, giving him a second chance. Which means that Stephen helped to get a entire world Deaded Than Dead in order to reach his super vague humanist agenda.

SMT IVA basically reveals that while Stephen loves humanity, he loves the concept of it, but is willing to get entire human populations annihilated in order to be sure that humanity rules.

Saying this, Stephen never comes off as a Fantastic Racist and the focus in on how much he loves humanity as a species.

Final Veredict

Stephen is a weird case, he is the Big Good but his actions in IVA definitely move him to a straight bastard territory and give him a rapsheet that makes the Law and Chaos factions of vanilla IV and I and II look tame in comparison. He is smart and legit Affably Evil to the player, and while the player might interpret him as a case of Fantastic Racism, Stephen never shows dislike for demons, actually befriending one of them until he decides support Dagda' plan due to realizing that said plan will lead to a more powerful and independent humanity.

edited 1st Jun '18 10:46:31 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

G-Editor Since: Mar, 2015 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities

#1228: Jun 1st 2018 at 10:29:02 PM

Druvalia and Stephen.

Yes as a non-bias forum, we do not judge the candidates for their sexually, but judge them for their intelligence and charisma...

And to make sure that no Politically Incorrect Villain ever gets approved as one!

To Sato

edited 1st Jun '18 10:36:49 PM by G-Editor

Overlord Since: Mar, 2013

#1229: Jun 1st 2018 at 10:35:56 PM

Yes to Dr. No, Edmund, Kreia, Guin, Druvalia and Stephen.

Anyway I promised I would take a look at the Mirror Universe version of Hoshi Sato from Enterprise, so I will EP her:

Who is Hoshi Sato? What has she done?

So this Hoshi Sato is from the Mirror Universe, where morality is flipped from the Star Trek Prime Universe (the show even gets a more violent intro). Hoshi is the Captain's Woman on the Imperial Terran ship Enterprise (in the Mirror Universe the Federation is replaced by the evil Terran Empire). She is the sexual partner and confident of the Enterprise's Captain Forest. Forest's second in command, Commander Archer begins a mutiny and overthrows Forest (this happens a lot in the Terran Empire). Archer is taking the Enterprise into Tholian Space to recover a star ship, the Defiant, that is from the Prime Universe a 100 years in the future, that would have technology that would let the Terran Empire crush its enemies (The Terran Empire is currently fighting a losing war with various alien species it is trying to subject). Hoshi goes to Archer's quarters to congratulate him taking command and tries to kill him, Archer disarms her, but decides to spare her.

Anyway for most of the first episode, we everyone betraying everyone, T'pol Archer's second in command betrays him and frees Forest who retakes command of the ship, but cannot alter the course Archer set, so Forest just has him tortured and gets commands from the Emperor to capture the Defiant. The Enterprise kidnaps a Tholian pilot and forces him to tell them about the Defiant (with Hoshi translating his words for the Enterprise crew). The Enterprise finds the Defiant and Forest sends Archer with a assault team to capture it. The Tholians manage to destroy the Enterprise, killing Forest, but Archer restarts the Defiant and destroys the Tholian ships, rescuing most of the Enterprise crew.

Anyway, in the second episode, there is more betrayals, with Archer deciding to use the Defiant to conquer the Terran Empire. Archer is still sleeping with Hoshi, who is encouraging his power mad schemes. T'pol learns of the Prime Universe's Federation and becomes unhappy that she is a slave while Vulcans in the Prime Universe are free and devises a plan to defeat Archer. However Hoshi deduces that T'pol has stolen the plans for the Defiant and knocks her out, helping Archer put down a rebellion from most of the alien members of his crew. Archer celebrates with wine in bed with Hoshi, but Hoshi has poisoned the wine, killing Archer. Hoshi is also sleeping with Mayweather, Archer's body guard, to try get his loyalty and those under his command. With that Hoshi takes over the Defiant and takes it to Earth. With the Defiant far more advanced then anything the Empire has and the Empire's fleet scattered to do to a war with rebel aliens who are defying the Empire's attempts to subject them, Hoshi takes over the Empire and crowns herself Empress.

What is her competition like? How does she perform against them?

Now the Mirror Universe is kinda of a place that is full of Stupid Evil characters (Worf and Garak who are competent in the Prime Universe are Smug Snakes in the Mirror Universe) and Mirror Archer is kinda of a meat head with an occasional competent idea. He let Hoshi live after trying to kill him, which was a fatal mistake. However her more subtle in bed manipulations of Archer moved his ambitions forward, till she killed him.

More impressive is discovering T'pol's rebellion, T'pol is far more competent then Archer, she was able to sabotage the ship by promising Chief Engineer Tucker sexual favors, but then uses her mind meld powers to manipulate him into sabotaging the ship and is able to convince one of Archer's allies. Dr. Phlox into betraying him, outwitting her is better good on Hoshi.

Hoshi seems like one of the more competent Mirror Universe characters.

Is she a Chessmaster? Charismatic? A Manipulative Bastard? Is she capable of thinking on her feet?

She is clearly beguiling enough to manipulate most of the men on the ship and her pillow talk with Archer helps him stick with his mad ambitions, which uses her plan term planning skills to take over Archer's plans to conquer the Empire.

I do think she was thinking on her feet when she was countering T'pol's rebellion, which she had no way to plan for.

I also think she is charismatic and not just in a Vampy way, she is able to pretend to be empathetic to Archer's fear and doubts, which is a good act for a power hungry snake like her.

Is she a bastard? Too much?

She is clearly a bastard, she will betray anyone to further her agenda and murder people who are no longer useful to her.

She has no real redeeming qualities, she is Vampy power hungry snake, but in terms of Terran Empire villains she is not that bad, she doesn't say anything overtly racist about the aliens on the ship and other Terran commanders through out the Mirror Universe are far more cruel and sadistic then she is, often wiping out planets.

Final Verdict?

She may count, I am not sure.

edited 1st Jun '18 10:38:35 PM by Overlord

KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]

Shin Megami Tensei IV

#1230: Jun 1st 2018 at 11:12:53 PM

...Dunno, it seems like all her competence are morons. I want more details of her competence.

And to make sure that no Politically Incorrect Villain ever gets approved as one!

I doubt that anyone propose PoliticallyIncorrectVillains . Bigoted villains sure, but straight up PoliticallyIncorrectVillains are usually Hate Sink with nothing cool in them

edited 1st Jun '18 11:14:43 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

Overlord Since: Mar, 2013

#1231: Jun 1st 2018 at 11:21:33 PM

Fair enough, she only appeared in two episodes and played in the back ground a lot of the time (scenes with her seducing Archer), so that might work against her, that's why I have doubts her. T'pol is competent, but Archer really is a meat head and he may be crazy, he is arguing with a figment of his imagination in those episodes. There is a lot of Stupid Evil in the Mirror Universe, she seemed to be able to wrap Archer and Forest around her finger, but that might say more about them then her.

Edit: I will say Hoshi was smart enough to know Archer's Star Fleet orders he used to justify his coup against Forest were forged and was skilled enough to translate for aliens they captured.

edited 1st Jun '18 11:45:51 PM by Overlord

G-Editor Since: Mar, 2015 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities

#1232: Jun 2nd 2018 at 1:13:29 AM

I second that opinion. Ironically Eric Cartman, one of the most famous (or infamous) examples of a Politically Incorrect Villain, was listed as a MB for a while before finally getting axed.

edited 2nd Jun '18 1:14:49 AM by G-Editor

43110 (Striking Back) Relationship Status: Reincarnated romance

#1233: Jun 2nd 2018 at 9:38:38 AM

Yes to Guin, Druvalia and Stephen.

Not sure on Hoshi, sounds like a case of Surrounded by Idiots.

Also, film sweep:

All About Eve: Addison De Witt. You know you've met a larger than life character when he has "wit" in his name. A Deadpan Snarker, Gentleman Snarker and Chessmaster, De Witt is a theatre critic with astonishing power and influence. He can destroy the reputation of top actresses in a single column. Smug Snake Eve Harrington makes the mistake of crossing Addison and suffers a Villainous BSoD when he gives her a Breaking Speech.
The Bad and the Beautiful: Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), the main character. The impoverished son of a legendary movie mogul who died bankrupt, he built up his own studio from nothing and made five Best Picture winners...and cheerfully stepped on everybody he had to in order to get it done. Some highlights: he got his best friend and creative partner to tell him all about his dream project, then stole the credit for all his ideas and gave the directing job to someone else; he recruited the alcoholic and mentally unstable daughter of a Hollywood legend to star in his next big movie, seduced her to get her through production sober, then started boffing one of the extras before the premier party was over; and he got his hot new screenwriter to finish his script by paying one of his Latin Lover leading men to seduce the guy's wife to keep her from distracting him...until the lover and the wife died in a plane crash the day they finished the final draft. So what's so magnificent about all this bastardry? In the film's final scene, all three of those people, who have gone on to become industry titans, agree to do one more film with him, saving his studio from bankruptcy. The man is just that damn charismatic.
Basic Instinct: Catherine Tramell. Charismatic, smart, highly manipulative and very stylish, this serial killer murdered whoever she wanted during her two movies, and happily got away with it.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon: Leslie Vernon is an aspiring spree killer (in the vein of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, as the movie is a big Deconstructor Fleet of slasher films) who is chosen to be the subject of a documentary that the main character, Taylor Gentry, is making. She eventually becomes great friends with Leslie, who turns out to be quite charismatic. Then, she is surprised when he does go through with the killings, his chosen victims trapped in a mansion that he pretreated to be lethal. She decides to help, but when she goes into the mansion, she realizes Leslie's real plan: she and her crew were also intended to be his victims, and they're playing right into his hands. Finally, she is the last victim left, and manages to kill him in exactly the way he said the final girl would. Unfortunately, he planned this the whole time, taking the preparations required to fake his own death...
Children of Paradise: Lacenaire, the poet, playwright and murderer from the French movie classic is an outstanding example of this trope. He's proudly evil ("I'll hold my head high, until it falls into the basket"), spends the second half of the movie manipulating events even when they don't go his own way and treating the other characters in the movie as if they are figures from his plays, is charming and foppish to the point of dandyism (in the original sense of the word, he lives during the era when the term was coined), he's witty and calm even when the lesser villain, the Count of Montray, has him bodily ejected from a theater and he gets even with the count with first a Crowning Moment Of Awesome and then a Crowning Moment Of Badass that must be seen to be believed. His real life namesake and counterpart was pretty salty himself, holding all Paris spellbound during his murder trial and inspiring writers like Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, who used him as one of his models for Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Richard B. Riddick, the series' titular Anti-Hero badass. A Genius Bruiser, he's also a skilled planner who routinely makes it appear as if he planned each step. This is especially true when he is fighting the Lord Marshal and is able to think fast enough to figure out where he's going to be moving next.
The Collector from Demon Knight. The Collector's modus operandi is to zero in on the Fatal Flaw of the residents and tempt them with anything he can use to get them to come over to his side, including but not limited to attractive women, promises of love and friendship, and offers of freedom from the hotel. And through it all Billy Zane is having a lot of fun playing the part.
Dial M for Murder: Tony Wendice. After discovering his wife Margot is cheating on him, he creates a complex plan to kill her while arranging a perfect alibi for himself and mentally punishing the man who cuckolded him at the same time. When Margot proves more resilient than he expected and kills the man he blackmailed into doing the deed, he only needs a few minutes to come up with a new plan to make it appear that she committed the act in cold blood. Even when his scheme is in danger of being exposed, he is quickly able to come up with a new way to turn the situation to his advantage. And finally when against all odds his whole plot is exposed, he turns out to be one of the all time great Graceful Losers, pouring wine for everyone who had a hand in finding him out (except a cop who he notes is still on duty).
Fracture: Anthony Hopkins' character with a bit of Gambit Roulette hatches a plan that allows him to shoot his cheating wife, hide the murder weapon, confess to his crime, have his charges acquitted and be immune against further trial, cause the suicide of the man sleeping with his wife, pull the plug on his comatose wife, and get away with it all. Until the last two minutes of the film anyway... which in all honesty, wouldn't get him behind bars. The evidence was obtained illegally, and he wasn't technically the one who killed her. The doctors did that, and if her death was ruled a murder, then it would mean that any and all doctors who have ever invoked a patient's "right to death" rights would have to be dragged in on counts of murder.
Gone Girl has Nick Dunne presented as the man responsible for his wife's disappearance, when he's actually a victim of her clever scheme. Not only is he completely unaware of her actions, but she manages to convince everyone that she's the innocent victim, and that he's an abusive bastard. She's also incredibly smart, and can easily adapt to situations on the fly. By the film's end, Amy gets exactly what she wants, becoming a Karma Houdini Magnificent Bastard of epic proportions.
Hannibal Lecter: Doctor Hannibal Lecter is probably the smartest cinematographic serial killer ever created.
Inglourious Basterds: More like Magnificent Basterd, Standartenfuhrer (Col.) Hans Landa, aka The Jew Hunter of steals the show with his awesomeness and magnificence. Despite being a brutal, sadistic maniac tasked with searching all of France for Jews in hiding, his wit, intelligence, romanticism, and charisma make him the real star of the show, not Raine and his Nazi-hunting Basterds. By the end of the film he's managed to take credit for killing the Nazi high command and ending the war in Europe, and got a nice seaside house in Nantucket on the side, all while allowing everyone else to do the work for him. The only hitch in the otherwise flawless execution of his plan is the swastika permanently carved into his forehead and Raine's shit on his chest.
Inside Man: Dalton Russel takes a bank hostage and creates a foolproof plan to achieve his objective (hint: it's not robbing the bank) while escaping by literally walking out of the front door. Keith Frazier's entry into the plot doesn't even faze him. Russell merely modifies his existing plan and turns Frazier into an unknowing accomplice. Ms. White from the same film has a reputation as this, but since she's a secondary character it remains an Informed Attribute at best.
John Carter: Matai Shang is certainly a Manipulative Bastard of epic proportions. The guy plays his cards perfectly, and even comes out on top at the end of the film (even though his plans are temporarily smashed). Really, the only reason why things don't go his way is that the protagonist (and his dog) are such massive badasses, and he couldn't forsee everything.
Jupiter Ascending: Titus Abrasax. In contrast to Balem's thuggishness, he mostly tells Jupiter the truth and tries to get her legally married, playing effortlessly to her natural inclinations, so he can murder her and claim the inheritance for herself.
Labyrinth: Jareth. The Large Ham aspect of this trope is definitely present. As is the manipulative part, as evidenced by his plan with the drugged peach. He's also very charismatic, and manages to keep Sarah from realizing he can't directly influence her until events are down to the wire.
Miller's Crossing: Tom Reagan is a fine example of a Magnificent Bastard protagonist. He's The Dragon to Leo, an Irish-American mobster, but it's clear who has the brains in the operation. Tom is a duplicitous alcoholic who's sleeping with Leo's fiancee and spends the movie double-crossing everyone he meets (and usually being beaten within an inch of his life by them). Then, at the end, it turns out the whole movie was a Zero-Approval Gambit on Tom's part. Everything he did, he did for Leo. He manipulates Leo's enemies into killing each other, personally kills the Smug Snake who was blackmailing him (with a truly badass Pre-Mortem One-Liner, no less), ensures that Leo remains firmly in power, and leaves his life of crime behind for good.
The Quick and the Dead: Gene Hackman's Herod. This magnificent bastard not only holds an entire town hostage as his own little kingdom, once killed a group of priests who nursed him back to health and burned down their mission, shoots and kills a boy who loves and looks up to him as a father, and was the man who forced a small girl (the protagonist) to accidentally shoot and kill her own father as she attempted to shoot through his hangman's noose (Y'know, for kids!), but he also hosts an annual picnic-and-quick-draw competition where anybody who wants to take a shot at him (literally) can do so (and most likely end up dead for the effort), all with an eat-your-heart-out smirk on his mug the whole time!
Repo! The Genetic Opera: Rotti Largo, who planted poison in Nathan Wallace's home lab, thus killing the woman they both loved. Then he convinced Nathan that Marni's death was all his (Nathan's) fault and made him work as a Repo Man for GeneCo. And that's not much considering some of the other stuff he gets away with (and tries to get away with) in the movie. In a deleted scene he managed to get Shilo to extract zydrate from her mother's corpse.
Rocky Horror Picture Show: Dr. Frank N Furter (Tim Curry) is this at times. He's able to manipulate two people whom he's barely met (IE: Brad & Janet) into sleeping with him, tricks said people into eating the remains of someone he killed out of pure spite (Meatloaf, anyone?), and FINALLY brainwashes not only Brad and Janet, but also his groupie Columbia and his own creation Rocky into performing a floorshow with him. All the while, for the most part, maintaining a very charismatic appeal to him.
- Farley Flavors from the sequel, Shock Treatment is this trope, even more so. He even has the the MB theme song. Also, when his plan to seduce Janet & gain revenge on Brad fails, he immediately cuts his losses and moves on to the next project. You don't destroy Farley. Victory is escaping his control. Oh, and stealing the car that was supposed to be yours, anyway.
The Royal Tenenbaums: Mr. Royal Tenenbaum, Esq. is a rotten husband who refuses to give his wife the divorce she requests, who worms his way back into the affections of his children and estranged wife by faking cancer, who is likely 90% responsible for the failures of his prodigious offspring, who introduces his adopted daughter as "my adopted daughter," who shot his own son (while on the same team, a fact he cavalierly dismisses) with a BB gun, and who starts a fight with the estranged wife's new beau by using antiquated racial epithets is still, somehow, mourned when he dies at the end of the film! A breathtaking and awe-inspiring bastardy magnificence.
A Shock to the System: Graham Marshall (Michael Caine). He methodically murders his bitchy wife and sleazy boss, beds his beautiful coworker, gets her to help him cover up the crimes after she finds out he did it (and drugged her to create an alibi), rubs the homicide cop's nose in it, and in the last scene takes out the chairman of the board and takes his place. And does it all with a Deadpan Snarker narration that is 200-proof Michael Caine gold.
Spy Game: Nathan Muir demonstrates a certain amount of Chessmaster proclivities, risks his pension and his retirement to get his protege free, and manages to charm his way into the information he needs to get the job done. The scene at the end, where his coworkers discover that he was never married, and he's been lying to all of them for years just for the hell of it, cements it. The best intelligence agencies in the world don't even know his birthday.
Swan. He has no other name. His past is a mystery, but his work is already a legend. He wrote and produced his first gold record at 14. Since then, he's won so many that he tried to deposit them in Fort Knox. He brought the blues to Britain. He brought Liverpool to America. He brought folk and rock together...Now he's looking for the new sound of the spheres, to inaugurate his own Xanadu, his own Disneyland...the Paradise, the ultimate rock palace. This film is the story of that search, of that sound, of the man who made it, the girl who sang it, and the monster who stole it.
Swordfish: Gabriel Shear may in fact be the ultimate epitome of this trope. Gabriel is essentially an amalgamation of James Bond, Tyler Durden, and Keyser Soze, the ultimate Magnificent Bastard. To quote Axl Torvalds- " He exists in a world beyond your world. What we only fantasize, he does. He lives a life where nothing is beyond him. But it is all an act. For all his charisma and charm. For all his wealth and expensive toys. Beneath it all he is a driven, unflinching, calculating machine,who takes what he wants, when he wants, then disappears " To examine:
1. Brilliance- A mastermind who plots and flawlessly executes the largest heist in human history, all while getting away with it in the end with absolutely no trace, and not even his true identity being revealed
2. Smooth Operator- Always keeping a calm, jocular demeanor, even when a SWAT team has guns to his head
3. Goal- A visionary villain, he is a fanatical counter-terrorist who has stared too far into the abyss and is willing to kill, say, an innocent teenager and the surrounding police, to protect America from the greater terrorist threat
4. Charisma- When not committing elaborate heists, he spends his days partying, drinking, and driving expensive cars
5. Badassery- More than happy to pull out a machine gun and fire out the door of a moving car when need be
6. Genre Savvy- Dangerously so. Even uses the flaws of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon to describe why pragmatic mercilessness will bring success to his robbery. And he is right.
Thick As Thieves: Keith Ripley (Morgan Freeman), a master thief who has been manipulating the steps of Miami thief Gabriel Martin (Antonio Banderas) from beginning to end, in order to pull off a heist for some Faberge Eggs from a high security vault, and he does this with so much class that you have to just love the guy.
The Third Man: Harry Lime. "Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax—the only way you can save money nowadays." And he's played by Orson Welles.
Unforgiven: Little Bill Daggett. Play by his rules while in town, particularly by handing over your means of defending yourself, and he's smiling, affable, and friendly; charming, really. Cross him, however, and he'll first put you in a position where you can't fight back and then beat you within an inch of your life or kill you outright for sheer fun. He even has a speech mid-way through detailing that what makes him formidable isn't speed or skill so much as his willingness to stand his ground and count on his manipulation of the odds where other people would piss themselves with fear. He has a speech detailing that what makes him formidable is that he takes the time to aim THE trait that makes all formidable gunfighters formidable to this day.
Watchmen: Ozymandius, arguably more so than his comicbook counterpart as his masterstroke doesn't rely on a fake, alien, psionic squid thing. He fakes an assassination attempt on himself, easily manhandles the competition in combat, has two different plans to deal with the setting's god figure, and when the heroes arrive to stop his plan reveals that he did it twenty minutes ago.
Whiplash: Fletcher. Luring Andrew into a false sense of security so that he could embarrass him in the film's final performance made for a devious reveal. Luckily, Andrew is able to save face with his drum solo.
Yojimbo: Kuwabatake Sanjuro. Not only does he play two rival gangs like fiddles, causing them both to collapse with little suspicion drawn to himself, he's able to turn his capture, which he didn't plan to his advantage.
Youth in Revolt: Nick shows signs of a budding one. Francois on the other hand takes it to the extreme. Though subverted when Nick stops letting Francois control things; he tries to be magnificent, but goes all smug instead.

Think I took out all the ones that we approved here. Anyways, if Ozymendias counts in the film I assume Scraggle would wanna do him there too and Ambar has told me he'll handle Inside Man. Anyone else see anything they wanna take?

edited 2nd Jun '18 9:49:55 AM by 43110

miraculous Goku Black (Apprentice)

Goku Black

#1234: Jun 2nd 2018 at 9:49:46 AM

Guin, Druvalia and Stephen.

As far as the batch above goes. Swan has attempted to rape somone in the movie and its implied he's actually suceeded. The gone girl one is a vile Smug Snake

edited 2nd Jun '18 10:12:36 AM by miraculous

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Overlord Since: Mar, 2013

#1235: Jun 2nd 2018 at 9:55:46 AM

That's a fair point about Hoshi.

Hoshi's first assassination attempt against Archer was sloppy, if Archer was not written like a cartoonishly Stupid Evil villain in these episodes, he would have her killed or sent to the brig, rather then leaving her alone, giving her another chance to take him out.

Maybe Hoshi is a one eyed queen in the land of the blind.

edited 2nd Jun '18 10:08:08 AM by Overlord

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010

#1236: Jun 2nd 2018 at 10:07:40 AM

I’ll give my thoughts on that host in just a few when I get home

Morgenthaler Since: Feb, 2016

#1237: Jun 2nd 2018 at 10:47:27 AM

For the ones I know from that film list:

Unsure on Catherine Tramell but leaning towards cut. She's been qualified as a Complete Monster and is a stone-cold sociopath, so she's probably too heinous to qualify. To name but one thing, murdering your loving parents for no other reason than to see if you can get away with it is a bit much.

Cut Riddick. He's far from stupid and can often be stylish, but he's not The Chessmaster, and not really a Manipulative Bastard either. While he has employed the Batman Gambit, he's much more prone to solving any problem with his knife, not genius planning. Also, the cited incident where he manages to defeat the Lord Marshal is because the opportunity just presented itself (because of the way in which is Super-Speed works, the LM had the choice of dying either at Riddick's hands or his Dragon Lord Vaako, and he chose Riddick to fulfill an old prophecy and to spite his subordinate for his betrayal).

Anthony Hopkins in Fracture... honestly, keep him. The entire film consists of him playing everyone expertly until the very end and using the Obfuscating Stupidity and A Fool for a Client angle for all its worth.

Hannibal Lecter: We've already qualified the series version, but in the films we're dealing with a bunch of different versions from Manhunter, Hopkins, and the prequel, the last of which is technically in canon with the Hopkins Lecter films.

Inglourious Basterds: Landa is an interesting example... I think the issue is that, much like Ratigan, he's a kind of villain who seems to style himself as a Magnificent Bastard with much Affably Evil banter and Wicked Cultured behavior, but at the end of the day is still more of a Smug Snake. Particularly, even if Aldo Raine hadn't decided to betray him, there's still the issue that Shosanna's whole plot to kill the Nazi high command never occurred to him.

Inside Man: Keep. He's charming, his plan is brilliant and completely succesful, his bank robbery ends with everyone walking out the front door alive and the robbers staying out of handcuffs, and he's not even particularly evil since he's specifically stealing from a guy who used to aid the Nazis.

Swordfish: Oh, lord yes, keep Gabriel. His plan is sheer brilliance, he's super-stylish, he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and he gets away with everything.

Watchmen: Keep Ozymandius. His entry needs expansion and/or an effortpost, but he effortlessly fits every criterium.

edited 2nd Jun '18 11:22:46 AM by Morgenthaler

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010

#1238: Jun 2nd 2018 at 11:16:29 AM

Seconding Inside Man as an obvious keep. Dalton Russell is easily one of the best film examples out there.

Little Bill and Herod are cuts. They miss some of the basic criteria, and in the case of Little Bill, the film deconstructs most of the character types in it as well.

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010

#1239: Jun 2nd 2018 at 11:22:26 AM

Now...

From what I remember of All About Eve, I may be willing to give a yes to Addison, but my memory is shaky
An easy yes to Bad and the Beautiful's Jonathan Shields from what I recall
Catherine from Basic Instinct? Cut. She's far too evil and sadistic for this.
Behind the Mask: Rise of Leslie Vernon: A keeper. While Leslie is a serial killer, the film is a cheerful deconstruction of slasher tropes, and Leslie is a very jovial sort of slasher with exceptional charisma, who leads the viewer through that deconstruction while everything proceeds according to his plan. He didn't make the rules, but he's exploiting them beautifully.
Children of Paradise: Lacenaire is a good keeper.
Riddick: Morgen is right. Cut him.
Demon Knight: Huh. The Collector is tough. He's a CM for a reason, but Billy Zane makes him into such a fun devilish figure. I'm gonna lean keep, as he never needlessly crosses the worst lines into something that'd make him too vile and Tales from the Crypt always has kind of a campy enough vibe to it.
Dial M for Murder: Tony's a great example.
Fracture: Keep him as Morgen said
Gone Girl: I'd be willing to keep Amy
Inglorious Basterds: Needless to say...I have strong reservations keeping a man who cheerfully embraces the nickname 'Jew Hunter' and ends the film screaming in pain and terror as a Swastika is carved into his skull.
Inside Man: All Ambar's, but a keeper
John Carter: I think Shang is a keeper, myself.
Jupiter Ascending: Just cut. A hedonistic Smug Snake whose plan fails completely.
Labyrinth: I lean keep for Jareth. David Bowie can take us to his mystical goblin kingdom and do whatever he wants, dammit!
Miller's Crossing: Oh, HELL yes keep Tom.
Quick and the Dead:....huh, I'm caught here. Ambar, what say you?
Repo: The Genetic Opera: I...could see Rotti keeping here, honestly.
Rocky Horror: mmm...not really sure I see it with Frnak.
Shock to the System: Haven't seen it, but seems a decent keep.
Spy Game: Haven't seen it, willing to hear the argument.
Phantom of the Paradise: No. Swan is just awful and too sleazy with his forced casting couch stuff.
Swordfish: Gabriel is an easy keeper.
Thick as Thieves: A keeper.
The Third Man: Harry is on the CM list for damn good reason, but his evil is more due to sheer, cold indifference rather than sadism. He's a master of Faux Affably Evil and so utterly charming and charismatic that I think he's an example of the overlap.
Whiplash: Cut. Fletcher is a brutal, homophobic bully.
Yojimbo: I think Sanjuro may be too heroic to keep. He may well fit more under Guile Hero.

43110 (Striking Back) Relationship Status: Reincarnated romance

#1240: Jun 2nd 2018 at 11:32:12 AM

For Gone Girl I don't know if it's so much the character was a Smug Snake as I just found her (and everyone else in that movie) unlikable. That being said, I'll put that aside if she meets all the criteria and I'm more than happy to hear a case.

KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]

Shin Megami Tensei IV

#1241: Jun 2nd 2018 at 11:51:01 AM

If everyone is a unlikeable asshole. I doubt anyone can qualify. .

EDIT: I went to its trope page, she's a sociopath who wants kill his spouse from cheating on her. Dear YHVH, change the genders and tell me if that's magnificent.

I mean, sure, his husband is a sociopath too in the book (albeit in the movie, it seems like his husband is just a jerk)

There's no way, she's too much of a abusive wife to be magnificent. His husband is awful too, but both are too scummy to be magnificent.

edited 2nd Jun '18 12:00:22 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010

#1242: Jun 2nd 2018 at 11:55:53 AM

@Lightysnake

I already said "cut" to Herod on Quick and the Dead. He's cool, but he doesn't actually demonstrate all the basic criteria and his death is, well, stupid (and a product of some of the issues with the film's writing).

miraculous Goku Black (Apprentice)

Goku Black

#1243: Jun 2nd 2018 at 12:18:09 PM

The issue is I feel shes too vile, she has none of the requiste charm and is just plain creepy.

So Im a for her personally.

I read up him and man he sounds vile, I'm legit surprised somone would put him here. I cut him from the ymmv page.

edited 2nd Jun '18 1:38:13 PM by miraculous

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Scraggle Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!

#1244: Jun 2nd 2018 at 1:31:43 PM

Did someone... really think Fletcher approached this trope's criteria in the slightest, even before we laid it all out properly?

Wyldchyld (Old as dirt)

#1245: Jun 2nd 2018 at 1:48:08 PM

Yes to Edmund. I was dubious about his bastard level being too much for the MB, but I think Scraggle's answered that question rather effectively.

I have to say no to Hoshi. The nature of the Mirror Mirror Universe means she's beating a low bar. However, my biggest issue with the MMU is that it's supposed to be a universe without redeeming features. The audience isn't usually supposed to sympathise with most of the power players in the MMU (root for some of the better evil characters, perhaps, but not sympathise), and plot-points have made out of those examples of sympathetic (or partially sympathetic) power players, such as Mirror Spock's attempt to introduce a more Prime Universe way of doing things be the downfall of the Empire (Enterprise is set approximately a century before the The Original Series).

As to the Film sweep:

Basic Instinct: She's far too sadistic. There's nothing redeeming about her. Cut.
Dial M For Murder: Keep, keep, keep!
Hannibal Lecter: Zero Context Example. It's pointing to the franchise, which feels lazy and there's been too many iterations of Lecter. Burn this.
Inside Man: I have no problem with Dalton being listed. Keep.
Labyrinth: No-one's removing Jarleth! It does, however, need a better write-up.
The Quick and the Dead: Herod is certainly a magnificent bastard, I'm just not sure he's the Magnificent Bastard trope. And I completely agree with Ambar on the way he dies.
Spy Game: I feel like it needs a better write-up because it just doesn't capture how Nathan played the plot from the start. From what I remember, Nathan is definitely a contender for the 'magnificent' part of the trope. However, the 'bastard' bit might be the potential snag. I think an EP would probably be a good idea for him. I've got no problem re-watching this film and doing one, I've got the DVD.
The Third Man: Zero Context Example: it's just a quote. However, from what I remember of the film, he should be a keeper. Perhaps someone could do an EP so we can get a better example written up?
Unforgiven: Cut. He just doesn't make the grade. I agree with what Ambar has said.

On the subject of films, has anyone here seen the film Cypher? There is a possible MB in that film, but there are so many caveats that I'm not certain whether he qualifies. I'm not going to mention his name because there is absolutely no way to EP him without ruining the plot of the film. Anyone who has seen the film will know who I'm talking about. I'm thinking he could probably use an EP even if it turns out he doesn't qualify, just to say he's been properly vetted.

edited 2nd Jun '18 2:27:56 PM by Wyldchyld

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

43110 (Striking Back) Relationship Status: Reincarnated romance

#1246: Jun 2nd 2018 at 2:30:13 PM

Thanks for the input, all! Now, a book sweep:

Mr. Wednesday from American Gods. Early on in the story, the protagonist's wife died in a car accident she inadvertently caused by... um... distracting the driver, which was later revealed to have been arranged by Mr. Wednesday so he could hire the protagonist for a dangerous job. This may seem impressive until you realize the thirty-something protagonist was born to be an integral part of Mr. Wednesday's Gambit Roulette. And that's without before we even get to his master plan in which he intends to screw over every other god in America (except, possibly, his partner) to replenish his power. And you kind of want him to get away with it.
Lawrence John Wargrave, aka U. N. Owen from And Then There Were None. Manages to craft the ultimate Locked Room Mystery and only his desire that someone appreciate his genius allowed the mystery to be solved. He even manages to fake his own death, and gets the last two victims to, respectively, try and kill one another, with the survivor committing suicide.
- Stephen Norton/Mr. X in Curtain is modeled on Iago of Othello infamy, and uses his deep understanding of human psychology in order to convince otherwise harmless people to commit murders. He almost succeeds in getting Hastings to kill a man who was showing an interest in his daughter and in the end Poirot has to murder him because it will never be possible to try him.
Bastard Operator from Hell. Over the course of hundreds of short stories, he has almost exclusively come out on top with all of his complex gambits, quickly turning every event in his favor. He can walk into a convention with no preparation and manipulate total strangers into giving him their money. He had a Wonderful Life sequence and instead of coming to a realization of how bad he is, the only thing he gets out of it was the password to a competitor's computer system. This is the man that could take over the world if he only cared about more than just making more money by doing less work.
Belisarius, the eponymous character of The Belisarius Series. He's portrayed as the most capable Roman general even before the Great Ones and the New Gods begin their machinations. With the help of Aide, a crystal sent from the future to advise him in his war against Link and it's Malwa followers, he reaches epic proportions. For example, he journeys to India, where he ingratiates himself with Vendanakatra the Vile and studies the Malwa's weaknesses, convincing the Malwa that he is planing to turn traitor while he regales Vendanakatra with tales of Kushan lasciviousness. Vendanakatra promptly replaces the elite Kushans guarding his prize, the Andhra princess Shakunlata, with eunuch torturer guards. This allows Shakunlata's mentor, the assassin Raghunath Rao, to rescue her. Belisarius disguises her as a camp follower in his own entourage, before handing over the fantastically huge Malwa bribe to help her and Rao finance the Andhra rebellion against Malwa. Even after he is exposed by Link and separated from his men, he manages to escape. Rana Sanga, the most (read: only) capable general on the Malwa side, eventually tracks Belisarius down only to find a decoy and a message explaining Pythagoras's Theorem to the enraged Rajput general while Belisarius himself escapes into the desert on camelback. Belisarius is noted for approaching all problems at an angle, which he explains is more useful than attempting to calculate odds. Towards the end of the series, the Malwa are terrified of him, with only the elite army of Damodara and Rana Sanga managing to ever match him.
Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22. Although a mere mess officer, he has connections all over the world and is - among other titles - mayor of an Italian city and imam of a Middle-Eastern country. Due to mastery of international import and export (including goods from Germany) and blatant pinching of various army supplies (he even leaves stylish notes!) he makes himself ludicrously rich, and becomes gradually even more of a capitalist wonder by turning his eye to private contracting with both the Allies and Axis. He eventually pulls off the amazing feat of bombing the regiment's own airfield for the Germans but easily avoids getting court-martialed due to his seemingly-unlimited funds. His only mistake is buying too much cotton from Egypt, but he takes care of that by convincing General Cathcart that the troops should be fine eating his excess cotton, provided they cover the cotton in chocolate sauce first.
H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos: Nyarlathotep: Not only is he a monster, he's the only one of Lovecraft's pantheon that seems to take real interest in actions of humans, which is not a very good thing for humanity. Prime examples include his appearance in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where he gives a three-page-long speech about how he was never trying to kill the protagonist (his minions just misunderstood him) and, in fact, needs him to go get the Dreamland's gods back to their rightful place in Kadath. He then proceeds to give the protagonist a flying creature that would take him to the Sunset City where the gods now dwell and explicitly warns him from flying too high with it. However, it turns out that the protagonist has no control over the beast and it is taking him to the court of the great daemon sultan Azathoth (the Mad God that spawned the entire universe, and the most powerful of all the Mythos' entities). He barely escapes with his life.
Edmond Dantes, also known as The Count of Monte Cristo. It's hard to summarize his schemes, but from psychologically destabilizing his enemies, to ruining their finances by messing with the telegraph system, to his inhuman penchant for disguises that allow him to control the flow of information about his character, and the way he draws the admiration of all who meet him... There isn't a single run-on sentence long enough to encapsulate his magnificence. As for bastardry, he does manipulate a greedy wife into poisoning almost every single member of her family, including one Shoot the Dog moment outside the count's immediate control where she poisons her nine-year-old son.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books has plenty of these:
- Lord Vetinari, Patrician and supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, is described as being such a Magnificent Bastard, he makes Machiavelli look like an amateur. (Which, it should be said, the Real Life Machiavelli actually was; he just wrote books about being a Magnificent Bastard. Or rather, tried to show why dictators are bad, and gave an example of how evil even a "good" dictator should be.) He plots against everyone, plays people against each other, and he manipulates people into doing exactly what he wants, and always gets away with it. He is the Trope Namer for Vetinari Job Security because as much as everyone else in the city personally resents his power, they have to admit that things would be ten times worse without him as no-one else could manage his balancing act. Vetinari is almost a subversion in that we meet him when he is already quite-contentedly in power, and his Magnificent Bastardry is dedicated entirely to maintaining the mundane bureaucratic affairs of the city. It is Ankh-Morpork as a whole that he's loyal to, not any single power within it, and he appears in the books almost as the embodiment of the city. Vetinari leads a scandal-less, Spartan private life and almost always appears as a peripheral character, never protagonist or antagonist.
- Samuel Vimes from the City Watch is one on a smaller scale, but is still no less treacherous. He is just a common copper, but he has an unparalleled understanding of criminal psychology, and uses every trick in the book to win against aristocrats, politicians, and monsters.
- Vimes' protege, Carrot, is probably a bigger bastard than Vimes, what with getting everybody to do what he wants by simply being nice. Carrot (possibly) keeps his magnificence hidden under a guise of innocence and lawfulness, and annoys people (and the readers) closest to him because they can't figure out if he's actively manipulating them.
- Going Postal contrasts Vetinari with Reacher Gilt, who fits the classic version of this trope to a T; Moist, the protagonist mentioned below, describes him as the greatest conman he's ever met. He secretly has people killed, he's the toast of the upper classes, and he admits freely that he's a pirate, but no-one listens. He buys the clacks with its own money, makes money running it into the ground, will make money selling its remains to himself for a pittance, profit as it's built back up... he might even make a profit running the damn thing, though that's more gravy than anything. And he gets away with it because he's so bald-faced about it, as well as amazingly charming, that no-one believes he's serious.
- Moist von Lipwig also falls here by sheer Refuge in Audacity, while less inclined to actual villainy than Gilt. Forced into the highly dangerous position of Postmaster, which has already killed the four previous incumbents, he manages to hold on to dear life with enormous amounts of charisma, convincing first the older, retired postmen and later all of Ankh-Morpork that the Post Office is returning to life. When Gilt arranges for the Post Office arson, he comes up with a way to revitalize the Post - unearth all the cash he made as a conman and passing it as a gift from the gods, putting the money to good use and beginning the path to true redemption. He goes against Gilt and suckers him into an unwinnable wager with a broom. When his criminal past catches up with him in the next book, he sucker punches everyone trying to take advantage of it by confessing it all, robbing them of any actual ammunition and gaining the full trust of the city in the bargain.
- Sergeant Jackrum from Monstrous Regiment, asides from being a major badass, may not appear to have high rank, but this is deceptive. Jackrum knows how to play "ruperts" — slang for officers — like a fiddle, "anticipating their orders" so that he is basically in command, and if that fails making damn sure that things swing his way anyway.
  He was a sergeant major in a roomful of confused ruperts, and he was happier than a terrier in a barrel of rats.
- Granny Weatherwax, now that she's largely forfeited centre stage to Tiffany Aching, has the competition for the Magnificent Bitch title all sewn up. She is the greatest witch in the world, but prefers to use psychology and cunning to win the day (as using power outright would likely corrupt her into a bad witch). But when she unleashes her power and outplays her enemies, she does so with... theatrics.
- Many of the greatest witches qualify for this trope. There's Nanny Ogg, who is rumoured to be more powerful than Granny, but prefers to gossip and befriend the heroes who will 'save' the day. There's also Granny Aching, Tiffany Aching's grandmother, who denied she was ever a witch, but could bring mostly-dead lambs back to life.
Dracula in the eponymous novel by Bram Stoker; a soulless, eerily polite Manipulative Bastard whose nocturnal predations turn Victorian morality on its head, transforming demure and innocent young maidens into voluptuous, demonic temptresses right under the noses of their impotent menfolk, all while remaining mockingly out of reach. He plots and nearly executes the conquest of England that is only derailed due to a Contrived Coincidence involving his first victim in England's connections. His massive effect on pop culture, almost singlehandedly inventing the modern image of the suave, aristocratic vampire, is largely derived from the personality created in Stoker's original novel - repulsively evil yet undeniably magnetic.
Raistlin Majere from Dragonlance is definitely an example of this. His cunning plan? Go back in time, study under the most powerful dark wizard ever (also Magnificent in his own right), then kill him and steal the rest of his secrets, organize an army and attack one fortress in order to get close to another which contains a gate to the Abyss, manipulate a cleric of good into ~~falling in love with him~~ helping him open it, lure out the supreme goddess of darkness, kill her, and take her place. The only thing more insane is how close he came to succeeding. This is made more interesting by how many times Raistlin came close to failing; sure, he's a supreme Bastard, master manipulator, and ends up the series's most powerful dark wizard, but let's not forget that he started with absolutely nothing, and gambled everything with every step - this is a man so physically frail he coughs blood after casting even the most basic spells, and constantly wrestling with his own amorality, bitterness, and the shreds of actual love he felt for his brother and even Crysania. All of this only combines to make him more Magnificent; no wonder he's a Draco in Leather Pants to many fans of the books.
Gentleman Johnnie Marcone from Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series. He's constantly putting himself in a position where it's absolutely necessary for people who hate him to cooperate with him, whether because he's the lesser of several evils or simply the only option. He has single-handedly brought all of Chicago's organized crime under his direct control and even managed to be the first normal human to sign on to the magical equivalent of the Geneva Convention known as the Unseelie Accords. Harry says it all: "Say what you want about Marcone, but he's got balls that drag the ground when he walks."
- Another Dresden Files example: Lara Raith, who single-handedly cripples the White King (her own father) just so she can assert herself as the power behind the throne, and then proceeds to manipulate the rival families of the White Court into attacking female magic users too weak for the White Council to notice, betting on the fact that Harry will get involved and wipe out all of the challengers for leadership of the White Court. Even if it hadn't worked, she still would have come out on top for the same reasons that she used to convince her dupes in the first place.
- Nicodemus. Over 2000 years old, head of the order of the blackened Denarius, instigator and magnifier of multiple wars and plagues, slaughterer of hundreds of Knights of the Cross and perfectly plans and executes (until Harry throws a spanner in the works) a scheme to capture both Marcone, chief crime lord in the entire US, and the Archive, essentially everything ever written down in the head of a little girl who is stronger than the Summer and Winter Ladies. Also, uses when he throws Lasciel's coin at little Harry. Either Harry Dresden or Carpenter is going to take it, and either would be perfect for his purposes.
  - He is later out-gambitted by Mab and Marcone (again!) in Skin Game
Forgotten Realms, having more underground intrigues than open epic quests, has its share.
- Elaith "The Serpent" Craulnober appears in books of Elaine Cunningham and Ed Greenwood. Stylish, fearless, merciless and almost shameless crimelord of explosive temper. He easily flips between Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain, usually intervening when something offends him. Or protects Status Quo when things can get worse — he wrecks an attempt to establish a thieves and assassins guild in his city "because it's not in his best interests" or saves a hero as an "enemy of my enemy" — he prospers, why let anyone to rock the boat?
- Lauzoril, extremely charismatic Zulkir of Enchantment. Became leader of Imperialist party despite demonstratively breaking Red Wizards' tradition. Dodged Villain Decay despite being defeated in military campaigns, then tired of wars, steered further into Affably Evil and beyond, jumping into dangerous adventure to save a complete stranger just because his daughter happened to show a compassion to this guy during a scrying lesson. Witch Queen is the most dangerous mage in his world and not only wrecked all Red Wizards' plans she knew of, but simply killed them at sight, and is known as a bit crazy — not a typical Friendly Enemy. So what? First, long years of leading attacks on her land and underground war on her Harpers agents, up to an assassination attempt on her sister. Then he got a cheek and skill to scry upon her while apparently disabling the wards preventing her from far-seeing his real face at will. Then they met and... parted as friends. He managed to make sort of separate peace with her, extolling the future trade rivalries on the same breath.
Steerpike of the Gormenghast novels. Mr Machiavelli and one of the greatest Magnificent Bastards ever. Rises from a kitchen boy to the unofficial ruler of the castle, very nearly manages to pervert the Groan line and install himself as lord of all, spies on everyone through an ingenious mirror system he's created, single-handedly torches part of the building, does away with more than one Groan and is never, ever, ever short of a comeback. And, in case that wasn't enough, manages to make damn near every girl that looks at him fall in love with him, despite the fact that he's pretty weird-looking (later deformed), if not downright ugly. All of this at the age of SEVENTEEN.
Honor Harrington has the Mesa Alignment. It's implicated that they not only started the current war between Manticore and Haven, but that they caused the revolution in Haven. 'The first one 200 years ago.' All part of the plan feeding their true plans. Not only that, but the Audubon Ballroom, a terrorist organization that kills Mesan leaders, is completely compromised and only kills deadweight in the cover organizations that don't know the Alignment exists, despite being nominal heads of Mesa.
Henri De Belcamp in John Devil (1862) by Paul Féval. He a master of disguise with Napoleonic Ambitions and incredible charisma who ingeniously uses his nemesis Temple's own methods against, culminating in a brilliant Batman Gambit. He's able to gain the blind loyalty of people who have every reason to hate him and lies as easily as he tells the truth. He is sometimes considered the first Super Villain and with good reason.
John Grisham works:
- Troy Phelan from the novel The Testament. A rich businessman with over 11 billion dollars in assets as well as three ex-wives and six children he hates with a passion, he cooks up an ingenious plan to totally screw them when he dies. He first fools his heirs into thinking he signed a will that divided the money equally among them. Then, while they're not looking, he signs the real will. In it, he gives his entire fortune to an illegitimate daughter. He only gives enough money to his heirs to cover all of their debts up to the date of his death, orders his lawyer to keep the will from being publicly read for a month, and then commits suicide. The lawyer then realizes that thinking they're going to inherit a fortune, all of Phelan's heirs will go on a spending spree for the next month and incur even greater debts. Suffice to say, when the will was finally read, everybody realized how much of a Magnificent Bastard Troy Phelan really was. The icing on this cake? Shortly before committing suicide, he manipulates his family into getting a team of doctors to declare him mentally competent, knowing that they'll try to backpedal furiously when the real will is read.
- The Appeal definitely qualifies. A legendary corporate predator Carl Trudeau with three billion of his own in assets, Carl Trudeau is blindsided by the verdict handed down against a chemical company in which he is the main stockholder. So he devises a simple yet brilliant plan to get back at the small-town lawyers who were willing to take it on. One component is when he buys out the bank from which the trial lawyers get their loans, which will then get called and so force them to declare bankruptcy and turn away other clients. When the case finally reaches state Supreme Court, the senator whose fun he is funding goes in to work the justice whose campaign the case is the basis for. The icing on the cake? The little Mississippi town has no clue it is the shareholder, not the firm, that destroyed them. All because he was driven off the Forbes list of richest Americans. * The villain of L.A. Confidential: Captain Dudley Smith. The audience knows from the prologue he's evil, but you don't realize exactly how evil until Exley, White, and Vincennes unravel how everything from Patchett's hooker ring to the Nite Owl killings to Mickey Cohen's mobsters, to the smut books, to even Preston Exley, Ray Dieterling, and the Loren Atherton case is connected to him. Either he's got the best luck in the world, or he's put together one of the biggest Plans ever.
The Lies of Locke Lamora:
- Capa Vencarlo Barsarvi of the first book deserves an honorable mention, despite the fact he is ultimately defeated by an even greater Magnificent Bastard, namely the Grey King. Barsavi was just a professor of Rhetoric, for God's sake; moves to Camorr and in a few short years he had eliminated all the rival Capas, resulting in a total monopoly on the city's criminal enterprises with several thousand men and over a hundred gangs at his disposal. Not only that but through a shrewd alliance with the Duke's spymaster he promises not to go after the nobility and in exchange punishments are relaxed for his men and he physically rules several of the less desirable parts of the city. He kept this up for 20 years. Not a bad run.
- Hell, what about Locke Lamora himself? He started running games when he was *six*, and for all the Magnificent Bastardry of both the Grey King and Capa Barsavi, he ran rings around both of them- in the case of the latter, for over a decade! He conned dozens of nobles, including the Spider herself, and got away from it all without a scratch.
- In the sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies: The owner of the high class gambling ring Sinspire at first seems to be the classic 'early story mark' in his ego and position as decadent nobility, serving to lead Locke Lamora into the main plot. He shows quite nicely how this isn't the case as the end of book however, when as part of the Downer Ending he totally outsmarts even Locke. He had already worked out that they were trying to screw him over and what they were after, allowing them to do his dirty work to earn his 'trust' while replacing the target paintings with fakes.
Gaspard de Chalons (The Masked Empire) is superior in Game no doubt about that: He used the feather duel between Teagan and Michel against her to gain support from important nobles, he helps the city elves knowing he'll look better to them than Celene when she puts down their rebellion, and he's the one that sets her up to march on Halamshiral in the first place with his theater stunt. And the theater trip was soooo publicly embarrassing for Celene, and there's nothing she can do about it
- While he cultivates the appearance of a God-fearing and, whenever his superior is around, subservient old man, Rodin is actually a Machivellian mastermind and evil knowledgeable, who manipulates everyone around him, including D'Aigrigny. Being highly ambitious, Rodin's goal is nothing less than to become the new Pope. In addition to his deviousness, another one of Rodin's assets is his ability to quickly adapt to any situation and take advantage of it.
In Masques, the spymaster to whom Aralorn reports. When she comes back from her mission to spy on the ae'Magi, she is flabberghasted to find that he talks fondly of the ae'Magi, and seems to have forgotten everything about trying to spy on him, now instead claming that her mission was all about finding out whether there is a conspiracy to assassinate the ae'Magi. Aralorn fears that he's under a magic spell. Turns out, he isn't, he faked it ... because everyone else is under a spell to love and admire the ae'Magi, and he wants Aralorn to be careful - and what better way to frighten her than to pretend that even he is under the influence of that spell? The walls have ears, so he can't talk openly, but he does make her think. He later sends her on a mission which seems useless, but turns out to bring her into the middle of the main plot. She wonders whether this was intentional and he knew what she would do all along. (He writes about her that "she doesn't obey orders, just listen to suggestions", so he knew she might act of her own accord if something interesting happened)
In Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn book, main character Kelsier straddles the line between this and Guile Hero - he's solidly on the good guys' side, but is a bit of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who continually skirts Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. He's also a revolutionary brilliant enough to topple a thousand-year-old empire led by a Physical God posthumously.
- In Elantris by the same author, one of the three main viewpoint characters is one- Hrathen, a high priest of the theocratic Fjordell empire whose specialty lies in bringing nations to their knees so they can be converted. Things don't always go his way (as the other two main characters are both Magnificent in their own right, though neither are Bastards), but he never loses his cool and always finds a way to turn even defeat to his advantage. Hrathen's mostly unseen boss, Wyrn, is implied to be one as well (or at least a straight Chessmaster).
Prince Vladimir, The Chessmaster Evil Prince in the Nightfall (Series), is a Cunning Like a Fox, Wicked Cultured Manipulative Bastard, always ten steps ahead of his enemies. No one can guess what he thinks: he always has a hidden plan, and another one hidded behind it. He can make anyone do anything, while they believe it had been their own idea all along.
Rupert of Hentzau from The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel is a textbook—nay, an entire course in Magnificent Bastard-ness. Starting out as The Dragon for the book's villain, Rupert is a womanising, treacherous, amoral, totally fearless young man who will kidnap your king, try to stab you in a public place, seduce or rape any young, pretty woman (not drawing a line at the future Queen or his own master's mistress), and do it all with the utmost good-natured charm, despite having caused his mother to die of grief. Also, the following line:
... the man Johann, whom I was compelled to... send back to Zenda, where, by the way, Rupert Hentzau had him soundly flogged for daring to smirch the morals of Zenda by staying out all night in the pursuits of love.
Rebecca of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. She manipulates her husband into keeping quiet about some sort of trouble she's gotten into by promising to bring life into Manderley, his childhood home. She keeps him under her control with this promise for years and years while she goes off and has sex with several "friends in London", including her own cousin. In the meantime, the two of them keep up the charade that they are the perfect happy couple, and Rebecca makes fanatic friends of all the servants and townspeople, particularly Mrs. Danvers, who loved her because of her manipulativeness. When she discovers that she has a fatal cancer, she makes her husband believe that she is pregnant with another man's child, causing him to lose control, shoot her dead, and sink her body in her boat. And then, even after she's dead, she still manipulates the second Mrs. de Winter into thinking (more than she already did) that she is worthless and her husband doesn't love her, by way of mementos, Mrs. Danvers, and a string of misunderstandings.
The Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal Lecter, before Badass Decay set in. (There's a reason why Hannibal and Hannibal Rising are commonly considered Fanon Discontinuity.) Even in Hannibal, in the event that such a novel exists, he has his Magnificent moments: he convinces his captor's sister to kill her brother (however much the brother deserved death, that still counts for something); he brainwashes Clarice to become his sister/girlfriend/embodiment of utter Squick; and manages to kill an opponent and simultaneously recreate the death scene of said opponent's Renaissance ancestor, right down to using the original Renaissance palace, while quoting a scene from Dante that perfectly describes the murder. That's got to win him at least a couple of Magnificent points.
Star Wars Legends:
- Grand Admiral Thrawn of The Thrawn Trilogy. He can deduce the mindset of enemies merely by observing their art, architecture, and actions and adjust his tactics accordingly. His strategic skills were so great that he managed to keep pressure on the New Republic with only a relatively small fraction of the now-fractured Empire and managed to lock down Coruscant for the duration of his siege. His greatest act of magnificent bastardry, however, was in the prequel novel Outbound Flight wherein—as a young Commander of a very small Chiss task force—he managed to set up a plan of epic proportions by predicting the actions of a human guest/prisoner, his superiors, an agent of Darth Sidious and his Trade Federation comrades, a group of nomadic alien raiders, and a colony ship full of Jedi (the eponymous Outbound Flight) in such a manner that everything he wanted to deal with all convened in one area while those that he didn't were out of the way. He then counted on the Jedi on Outbound Flight to use the Force to disable the gunnery crews on the nomadic raider's fleet (which he wanted to destroy earlier, but couldn't under Chiss Rules of Engagement) while he used captured Trade Federation droids to destroy most of the now disabled fleet, his own ships then swooped in and disabled the weaponry of Outbound Flight.
- One of the X-Wing Series novels has a chapter that's basically a P.O.V. Sequel for the Bilbringi battle (the climax of The Last Command) from Corran Horn's perspective. When he realizes that the Republic fleet has been neatly maneuvered into Thrawn's trap, he gives us this quote which sums up the MB in a nutshell:
  Corran: The man's incredible. I'd like to meet him, shake his hand. And then kill him, of course.
The Duke of Avon in These Old Shades. There is a reason everyone calls him Satanis. Everyone knows him, everyone respects him, and everyone is at least a little afraid of him, even the Crown Prince of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world has a degree of fear for him. He started out life with a title, a horrible family reputation, a Big, Screwed-Up Family, a title, and a huge load of debt. He won his entire huge fortune at gambling, it is strongly implied that he spent years as a super spy, and he has managed to the point where no-one would dare to not invite him. He is only redeemed by falling in love, and even that doesn't change his Magnificent Bastardry. He still manipulates her, (although in some ways she manipulates him,) he still get his revenge, and the fact that his True Love is the illegitimate daughter of his worst enemy just makes it better. He utterly destroys the man, and manipulates him into taking his own life, and uses that to set up his love with money, name, and reputation. He comes out with everything, and the only one who ever bests him in any way, (and that only where he allows her,) is Leonie. His biggest problem is that he won't pursue her, thinks he is much too old for her, and is frustrated when she refuses his Matchmaking. In later books they're happily married, but he's still a (semi-retired) Magnificent Bastard. This is made very clear in Devil's Cub where he makes it very clear to his son that, because his actions have the potential to hurt Leonie, he will leave the country and reform, (for an Avon definition, of course,) whether he likes it or not, and that if he causes her any more problems he will never be seen again.
The Twelve Chairs: This page would not be complete without mentioning Ostap Bender of Eastern descent, although with very uncanny mind for such a guy. For instance, he uses the "comrades" of old Soviet Russia by ponding money from these by: creating fake organizations with a brilliant concept, saying he's a far victim's relative, collecting taxes for charity (or, once, for the "repairs of Proval")... all that complete with unbelieveably sharp and quirky diction and also sharp and quirky look. Sadly, his epic campaigns usually resulted in Bittersweet Ending, when the overall target seemed to be very, very close...
Father Rodin is a villain from the book The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue; he is a Jesuit priest and the secretary of Father D'Aigrigny, who has charged him with the mission to get hold of The Rennepont Heritage, which is actually The Wandering Jew's treasure. During the course of the book, Rodin puts various obstacles in the way of The Wandering Jew's true heirs, in order to claim the treasure for The Jesuit Order.
The evil queen protagonist of the short story A Woman's Work by Tanya Huff qualifies. She has a plan for everything that could happen ... for example, when an assassin's horse looks at her with intelligent eyes, she shoots it, and says "Horses don't have intelligent eyes", implying that it was not a mere horse, but the enemy's backup plan.
Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, which tell an alternate history of WWII in which the former enemies in the war team up to fight alien invaders, plays SS Officer Otto Skorzeny in this role out the yazoo. Of course, in the end, since he is a dedicated, genocidal Nazi, he eventually becomes the prime villain and is confronted and killed.
Toranaga in Shogun is a quintessential Magnificent Bastard, and if the book were more widely known, it is quite possible he would be considered the Trope Codifier rather than J.R. Ewing or Lionel Luthor. Toranaga combines The Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard gloriously, and plays an awesome game of Xanatos Speed Chess when his plans get derailed. The latter detail is one of the best aspects of the way he has been written; he is not omniscient, and does make mistakes, and has occasionally been faced with a situation that puts him at a potentially fatal disadvantage, but he is very good at improvising his way out. It is impossible not to hope Toranaga ends up at the top of the Gambit Pileup that forms the book's backdrop, even though he is the black in the Black-and-Grey Morality; both Toranaga and his nemesis Ishido had sworn to their late master that they would protect his young son until he was old enough to rule, but Ishido believes Toranaga intends to supplant the boy and become Shogun himself, and he's absolutely right. If any doubts about his Magnificent Bastard credentials remain towards the end of the book, the reveal in the final chapter of the insanely elaborate Kansas City Shuffle he's been playing through the entire second half, ending with his brutal To the Pain revenge on his nemesis Ishido, puts him firmly in this category: "It wasn't an Act of God. It was an Act of Toranaga."
Marquise Isabella de Merteuil of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons). She sets in motion a plot which results in multiple deaths and ruins the lives of several people, largely for the sake of boredom and petty revenge on a former lover.
Glenin Feiran of The Exiles trilogy by Melanie Rawn. Cunning, beautiful (and aware of it), she once remarks that the main difference between her and her major rival is that when she becomes the most powerful woman in the world, she'll look the part. She wants to control the world and order it to her vision, part of which involves using her sisters as breeders and later having his son sleep with his cousin for the magical offspring they'll produce. She also permanently maims her sister and shows no remorse. She's very popular with the fanbase for her intelligence.
Saint Dane from The Pendragon Adventure series. Most of the time he disguises as two different people. One he allows Bobby to know about to taunt him, and the other is somebody who isn't revealed until around the end of the book. Usually the second disguise is what he is using to manipulate everybody to their doom, with the exception of The Rivers of Zadaa where he convinces the Rokador to flood everything as himself and The Quillan Games where he reveals his new secret weapon Nevva Winter. To top things off, as of Raven Rise, he's arguably winning, having destroyed all the barriers of Halla. The fact he also is capable of holding his own in actual combat, is more or less unkillable and was responsible for the deaths of Press, Alder, Patrick and Kasha (though they all got better) makes it no surprise that an unusually large portion of the fanbase wants him to win in the last book.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms' Zhuge Liang, single-handedly responsible for half the Crowning Moments of Awesome in the novel. At the battle of Bo Wan, the first military exercise he planned, the Wei (enemy) forces ended up splintered, isolated, completely surrounded by an army less than half their number, ambushed from all sides, and on fire. His forces were barely scratched.
In Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear, Drac skilled in Talma (peculiar teachings of philosophy and logic) who apply it to political needs tend to achieve this effect. Like having a proper prisoner of war accidentally blinded, taught Talma and nearly adopted by one's clan as a way to stop the war. There's also the whole species whose survival model starts with "when running from a predator, run to another, make them fight over their prey, then slip away while they're busy". And when they started to mess with the big politics, they managed to confuse even Dracs into following their plans.
Achilles in the Ender's Shadow series. Sabotaging India's war in Indochina to allow China to sweep in and conquer both India Proper and its new conquests, and then playing both the Chinese and Peter Wiggin like a violin until Bean stops him makes him the epitome of a Magnificent Bastard. And all before his thirtieth (hell, maybe even his twentieth) birthday.
The eponymous Harry Lavender in The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender by Marele Day is an exceptional version of one of these in the crime fiction genre, with an iron grip on Sydney's crime world and the city itself. Through the extracts of the in-universe eponymous book, we gain insight into the type of character Harry is, a manipulative, cunning and brilliant man who is cold, yet still has an ego. In the story itself, he pulls off what would normally be The Perfect Crime, killing Mark Bannister by altering his pacemaker through a program and more or less causing him to have a heart attack by reading his own death. And then he engineers a cat-and-mouse game with the protagonist, Claudia, eventually resulting in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome which can be summed up with the words "To My Valentine". And that occurs when the man isn't even around. The only thing that screws his plan up in the end? There are some things that you just can't prepare for. Even then? He slips into a coma JUST before Claudia has the opportunity to expose him, avoiding punishment and preventing her from gaining that satisfaction of taking him down while he still lives, and his memoirs would end up being published posthumously, just as he intended. "They will remember me", indeed.
John Scalzi's protagonist from the Old Man's War series is just a lovable roguish character up until the third book where he leads a fleet of former enemy ships to Earth to circumvent the tyrannical extra-solar human government who had been keeping Earth in the dark about anything beyond Pluto. By doing so, he managed to prevent the extermination of the human race, free the Earth from the amoral splinter government and bring humanity into an interstellar alliance. He does all of it while navigating the judicial bureaucracy of a government that wants him to hang, framing himself as a war hero in the interplanetary politics, leading an entire planet and negotiating peace. At the same time, his daughter assists his plan in her own story which might qualify her as well.
1632: Cardinal Richelieu gets even more chances to demonstrate his magnificent bastardy than he did in Real Life, thanks to getting a preview of the flow of history from uptimer history books, as discussed in 1633.
Though he's not as magnificent as some examples on this list, and his plans do fail about half the time (though considering the sheer amount of schemes he has going at once, that's still a large number of successes) one has to give props to Nom Anor. Merely the fact that he can survive as a Dirty Coward in a culture of Proud Warrior Race Guy Scary Dogmatic Alien Knight Templars is quite a feat - and when his superiors finally do get tired of him, his response is to assume a fake identity and launch a rebellion that nearly brings their government to its knees. Plus, his knowledge of how "infidels" think and continuous work as a political destablizer was responsible for most of the victories the Yuuzhan Vong won against the New Republic period.
One of the best examples of this trope is Kees van Loo-Macklin in The Man Who Used The Universe by Alan Dean Foster. Starting as a homely and abused orphan and using nothing but determination and brainpower, he becomes one of the most powerful criminal figures in human space. Then he sells out almost all his old cronies, convincing everyone that he was really an undercover law enforcement agent. From there, he manipulates the human dominated empire and its chief rival by becoming a double agent for both sides against the other in order to trick them into forming an alliance in order to attack a race that knows nothing about either side. He uses this con in order to become the president of the combined alliance. Along the way are littered the bodies of many rivals and innocent victims who were simply more useful to him dead than alive. And why does he do all of this? To fulfill a lifelong desire never to feel vulnerable again.
From Warbreaker, Denth, Dragon with an Agenda to the Government Conspiracy. So Affably Evil that he has one of the main characters totally convinced he's a good guy despite being a mercenary who keeps company with a Psycho for Hire, a Jerkass and a zombie; uses said main character as part of a plot to utterly destabilize the government while keeping her completely in the dark about his real intentions, and as he is Really 700 Years Old he's ridiculously experienced.
Sang-drax of The Death Gate Cycle is one when he first appears in the fifth book, in which he manipulates an entire world war for the whole purpose of messing with Haplo and distracting him from his true work, while all the while being annoyingly (to Haplo) cheery and upbeat about the whole thing. Unfortunately, his overconfidence led him to suffer Villain Decay in the sixth and seventh books, downgrading him to a (literal) Smug Snake.
Duke Roger of Conte, from the Song of the Lioness quartet. He's handsome, charismatic, talented, a snappy dresser— oh yeah, and determined to get the throne at any cost. So much so that the heroine has to kill him twice.
Lord Aquitainus Attis of Codex Alera morphs into one of these (he was already The Chessmaster) after learning his backstory. He was the best friend of Princeps Gaius Septimus, who was assassinated during a major battle by a hostile faction within court. When Septimus's father, First Lord Gaius Sextus, did nothing to solve the murder, Aquitaine took matters into his own hands, deciding to destroy the conspirators himself and take the throne from a man too weak to save his own son. How does he do this? By marrying the only conspirator he knows the identity of and using her formidable skills to help track down the others and angle for the throne. Now he's finally managed to get rid of the wife, kill everyone else suspected of being involved in Septimus's murder, and taken control of the throne as regent. Too bad for him that he can't enjoy his success, as there's a very hostile Horde of Alien Locusts running around making a mess of things...
- And he's got nothing on First Lord Gaius Sextus. The reason Attis was just regent? It's because Sextus adopted him as Octavian's younger brother. He also placed one of his most talented Cursors at Attis's disposal, ensuring that not only was the Realm in the most competent hands possibly until Tavi returned, but there was someone around to fix the problem if said hands didn't want to let go.
A female example being The Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales. She is able to control her first three rich husbands who are old and gets them to give her their money. She comes across as more sympathetic than say the Pardoner, since she never tries to take from the poor. She tames her fifth husband Jankyn, by burning his misogynistic books and they both end up living peacefully until he dies. Making this trope as old as paper.
Tulo'Stenaloor from the Legacy of the Aldenata nearly manages to pierce the United States' defenses where all other Posleen generals had bashed their heads against them, forcing the American government to pull out all the stops, including nuking their own soil multiple times to stop him and dropping an antimatter bomb on Georgia. He does this by gathering the most brilliant Posleen tribes together in one place, using Lost Technology from the Neglectful Precursors in creative ways no Posleen had used before, and treating his Mooks with enough kindness to make him love them and increase their efficiency.
Henry, a brilliant college student from The Secret History, who his teacher says would have made a great doctor, soldier, scientist, or spy. He plans the perfect crime, the murder of one of his friends, and keeps the rest of the central clique from getting found out through an elegant series of lies, schemes, and secrecy. He is also a master of playing people against each other, which nearly gets him killed by another former friend. He kills himself at the end of the book—he's in control even of his own death. He arguably ruins the lives of the remaining main characters—but up until the end, most of them continue to do exactly as he says.
Female example: The witch Senna Wales of Everworld. Originally introduced as a mysterious and withdrawn teenaged girl hunted by all the major factions of Everworld for her status as the "gateway" between worlds (it is for her the first book Search for Senna is named), she slowly reveals more of her personality, until Inside the Illusion, the book narrated from her point of view, which finally reveals what she's been doing behind the curtains. From there, she's pretty much the whole deal; has been manipulating events right from the start, makes the main hero her bitch with magic, memorizes every character's quirks and emotions and uses them to control them, has been pulling the strings of GODS, outsmarting them with her human ingenuity and imagination, tied a string around the heart of the hero that effectively leaves him still protecting her and doing her bidding even when she isn't using magic on him partially by way of a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, has pretty much the entire cast as her Unwitting Pawns, pulls Batman Gambit after Batman Gambit as easily as breathing, is so skilled at Xanatos Speed Chess that she provided a quote for that page, and in her spare time on the side of all this, forged her own personal army of gun-toting Psychos For Hire who nearly worship her, armed them with modern weapons, and brought them all over to Everworld to bring about her master plan of crushing the gods and their forces with technology, overthrowing all the governments, and ruling the whole of Everworld for her own.
Don Quixote: Gines de Pasamonte: An ungrateful galley slave whom Don Quixote frees, and a great conman. In Part I, Gines is convicted for more crimes that all the other galley slaves, and carries many more chains because he is such a great villain. Gines is a vain, cynical bandit, thief, swindler, and picaresque writer who doesn't appreciate being called names like ''Ginesillo de Parapilla''. After Don Quixote frees him and his companions, Gines repays him by attacking him and stealing his sword. Later, he steals Sancho's donkey while Sancho is sleeping over it (and when Sancho wakes up, he falls spectacularly). Then we discover in Part II that Gines is a Master of Disguise, first when Gines disguises himself as a romany when Sancho recognizes his donkey, and then when the narrator told us that a character that we knew as "Maese Pedro" really was Gines, practicing a con that fooled entire towns -and our two protagonists- again. Gines is so important to the book, that is the only character of the novel to appear in both parts who is not from Don Quixote's town.
His Dark Materials: It's not exactly difficult to understand what it is Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter saw in each other — when the series begins, she's running a secret, powerful, and extraordinarily unethical scientific foundation/political faction within the Church, and he's about to go into Luxury Exile, the better to brood over his plans to declare war on God. And it builds from there — by the time you see them both in action at once, in the third book, you can't help but wonder what might have been if they'd ever agreed on anything before it was too late.
Nahuseresh from The Queen of Attolia is an ambassador from the Mede Empire across the middle sea, which wants to expand to the continent the eponymous queen's country is on. But since the Greater Powers of the Continent will slam the Medes if they invade, they have to be sneaky about it and be invited across the sea. To accomplish this Nahuseresh goads the Attolian queen into cutting off The Hero's hand, sparking a war between Attolia and Eddis and eventually leading to a three-way war between Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis. He smoothly performs in an advisory capacity to the queen of Attolia, bribing, blackmailing, and threatening her barons to support him and killing the ones he can't corrupt, all while underestimating her vast intelligence on the basis of her sex.
The Jackal, Villain Protagonist of The Day of the Jackal, manages to get his plan to assassinate Charles De Gaulle some way down before an OAS member in the wrong place at the wrong time blurts out his codename under Electric Torture. He still remains ahead of the Hero Antagonist's attempts to pin him down, with only a few mistakes and slip-ups allowing the authorities to close the gap. Even then, he actually manages to get a shot off at De Gaulle before Lebel finally catches up to and kills him.
The Minds of Iain M. Banks's Culture novels. Plans are their hobby, but the Interesting Times Gang of Excession and the GCU Sleeper Service are worth particular mention, as well as the Special Circumstances plots of The Player of Games — crashing a interstellar empire bound together by a complex game — and sheer degree to which the Chelgrians were outmanoeuvred in Look to Windward.
Melisande Shahrizai will play you to your face and you both know it and she still wins. She is a very skilled & dangerous player in the game of thrones & always has backup plans, so even if her schemes fail she can still escape punishment. She's charming, charismatic, cunning, and utterly lacking in a conscience.
- Barquiel L'Envers as well. He acts as both antagonist and reluctant ally, and his methods are immoral but very effective. He mostly sticks to Machiavellian plotting, but is also a feared warrior and general, and he even (charges out of a besieged fortress to daringly rescue Phedre, whom he doesn't even like that much.) L'Envers is charismatic, imposing, and knows how to dish out a good quip. He's one of very few people Melisande views as a threat to her plans.
Parvis from Andrey Lazarchuk's Tranquilium. The head of the Soviet intelligence network in Tranquilium, he was to some extent or another behind every Soviet scheme, including the many successful ones like the socialist revolution in one of the two great powers sharing that world. He has built for himself a capable and loyal team of advisors and assistants. He has shown himself time and again to be very good at recruiting people that were his natural enemies to serve his plans. And his back-up plan for when everything goes wrong is... truly something else: he pulled a Heel–Face Turn, overthrew the increasingly discredited Merryland revolutionary government, made himself president with popular support, set up a government secretly made up of his old team and then repeatedly ingratiated the good guys to himself by helping them out against common enemies, knowing full well that they had no choice but to work with him unless they wanted a war with a Merryland government that is actually popular and competent.
Kronos from Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He manages to be magnificent even as pieces in Tartarus. There's a reason he's known as "The Crooked One". Best seen through his plan in book 2: he tries to recover the Golden Fleece to use its healing powers to restore himself. Percy and the others from Camp Half-Blood chase after him, not only to stop him from recuperating with the Fleece's power, but also to use its magic to revitalize the pine tree protecting the camp's border, which is also Annabeth's transmogrified friend Thalia. In the end Percy recovers the Fleece and uses it to heal the tree... but it purges Thalia from the tree in the process. It turns out that Thalia is a powerful half-blood who is a possible subject of a prophecy whom Kronos intends to manipulate into destroying the gods. And while getting the Fleece himself and recuperating would have been nice, restoring Thalia to manipulate her was Kronos's end goal the entire time. There was almost no way for him to not walk away from that adventure and not come out on top in some manner.
Gerald Tarrant from C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy is a very classic Magnificent Bastard: handsome, educated, hypercompetent, suave, and utterly and totally amoral. In the course of his nine hundred year lifespan, he reshaped human society in his image multiple times, and the planet at least twice. It would take two lists side by side to compare the 'magnificent' parts with the 'bastard' parts, but let's just say that by the end of the trilogy he goes from being the single most evil, reviled, feared, and dangerous monster on the face of the planet to the man who saves the world.
Hasan ibn Sabbah from Vladimir Bartol's Alamut. He cheerfully builds himself the new Prophet to his followers with the power to send people to Paradise at will with a bunch of elaborate parlor tricks. Yet he is a man of good humour who claims to do this because the people are happier to have something to believe in, and if they weren't given a chance to die for their faith, they'd just come up with far more brutal, base reasons to slaughter each other. And for his defense, he tried hard for decades to share his true wisdom with people, only to be rejected at every turn. In the end he decided that if people want some unknowable and divine to believe in, he would provide them just that. And for his political skills, he got an empire to fall apart with a couple of well-chosen assassinations. He probably fit the trope even in Real Life (yes, he was a real person), though his actual motivations are much less clear.
The Star Trek: Mirror Universe Spock in The Sorrows of Empire proves to be a truly great one. After killing Kirk and assuming command of the ISS Enterprise, he embarks on a 26 year career which ends up with him as Emperor. We are told in the Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episodes that his weakness allowed the Empire to fall and its population be enslaved. What the story reveals is that he planned for this to happen. Realizing that the Empire was doomed to fail and millenia of civilization would be lost if nothing changed, and yet freedom and democracy could not be introduced into such a corrupt system, he intentionally weakened the Empire prematurely while hiding away information and people who would form a resistance and protect knowledge and culture, turned the Vulcan population into a secret spy network which would be in place when they were conquered, all so that the humans, Vulcans, and their allies would appreciate freedom because they would have to fight for it, and in doing so bring down all the empires. Even being executed by the conquerors is part of his plan.
German philosopher Oswald Spengler was fascinated by them (like so many), and stated in his non-fiction book The Decline of the West that there's barely if anything comparable to the satisfaction than that you feel if all the pieces of a great combination fall into place, Just as Planned.
The Chathrand Voyages has Sandor Ott, Spymaster of The Empire Arqual. An extraodinarily skilled fighter in multiple weapons, and leader of various hidden agents who ensure he has the proper dirt on anyone he needs to manipulate. When every one of your lines can easily be imagined in Ian McShane's voice, you know you're one of these.
Vampire Academy gives us Victor Dashkov, who is extremely close to the main characters (to the point where one regularly calls him uncle), and yet zaps one with a compulsion charm that might have ended up with her being expelled and her mentor fired, and kidnaps the other, torturing her and ultimately forcing her into something that drives her closer to insanity. And then, for the rest of the series, continually screws with the protagonists - despite the fact he's in jail for most of that time. He only stops because he's killed in a burst of insanity on Rose's part.
Alan Ryves of The Demon's Lexicon, despite initially bearing all the signs of being a classic selfless Hero, turns out to be a master manipulator who has no compunction about hurting people and even endangering their lives in order to protect his brother.
Waleran Bigod from The Pillars of the Earth, a thoroughly corrupt priest who has long since convinced himself that furthering his own ambition no matter the cost is completely as God wishes. As such, he ruthlessly seizes power time and again with numerous elaborate political ploys, and is also very good at thinking on his feet whenever he's outwitted. It's to the point where pretty much no one was surprised when today's consummate Magnificent Bastard actor Ian McShane was picked to play him in the miniseries adaptation.
Thomas Cromwell as portrayed in Wolf Hall is as close to this as you could expect from the main character. He is charismatic, likeble, quite nice at times, and goes from being the son of a blacksmith to the King's closest adviser. He also plays a large part in enabling the king to divorce Katherine of Aragon, sends Thomas More to his death, and talks Henry Percy out of insisting he's married to Anne Boleyn and forces him to go back to the North to be ruined. His character in real life is debatable. Most other media portray him as a monster who helped destroy the ideals of the medieval age.
China Sorrows is the Magnificent Bitch of the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. She's so beautiful she's able to make people fall in love with her the instant they see her. Skulduggery states that the effect wears away over time but China points out that it never quite goes away. China is a Deadpan Snarker, Femme Fatale and Chessmaster who owns a library containing pretty much everything in existence, she has a mastery of magical symbols that are carved all over her library, her glamorous apartment and even her own body. She's also a former worshipper of the Faceless Ones but was the only member of her cult smart enough to break free of her teachings and join the good guys. She still doesn't consider herself "a good guy" however and continually states that she has no need of friends and is on nobody's side but her own. We don't know how much of this is true however as she is shown to have a slightly softer side and a somewhat protective, maternal instinct towards Valkyrie. She's also the person who led Skulduggery's wife and child into the trap that killed them, a secret she's protected ever since.
- Skulduggery himself is something of a Magnificent Bastard at times. He's an anti-hero, a Deadpan Snarker, a brilliant detective with astonishing powers of observation, brought himself back from the dead as a living skeleton by means of satanic magic, has a gift for plans and has fought evil sorcerers with unstoppable MacGuffins at their disposal, mutants, evil gods, dark spirits, WMDs and lived to tell the tale.
  - Nefarian Serpine, the Wicked Cultured Card-Carrying Villain who killed Skulduggery's family is definitely this trope. He was the second-in-command of an Evil Overlord who wanted to bring back Eldritch Abominations, murdered Skulduggery's family in front of him, blinding him with rage so much that he fell into an elaborate trap that Serpine had set for him after which he tortured him to death and burned his body for all to see. When Skulduggery came back from the dead and the war started turning sour for Serpine's side, he turned mole for the good guys, gained immunity for his past crimes, managed to pass himself off as a respectable member of society and obtained a superpowerful McGuffin that enabled him to kill the Council of Elders so that he could get the Book of Names which would enable him to take over the world. He did all this with a sinister smirk and a gift for a gift for Reason You Suck Speeches. He only lost because he was Drunk on the Dark Side and Axe-Crazy!
The Deaf Man from Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. His evil crime schemes are so perfect, that he loses only because they are too perfect for this sinful world. The author publicly stated at one point that the reason he didn't do more Deaf Man books was that the character was smarter than he was.
Montresor from "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe is an aristocrat who lures Fortunato, a drunken buffoon who has insulted him down the catacombs underneath his ancestral manor by promising him a cask of the vintage Sherry, Amontillado. He then buries him alive and sarcastically brags about it fifty years later. This troper is sure Montresor must be related to Iago from Othello!
The beast AKA Tobias Venitar and James Aiden and the old man AKA Francis Blake from 'The Last of the Venitars' both arguably qualified. Both managed to seize positions of power starting from nothing. Both managed to manipulate almost every character they met to their own ends. The final confrontation between them though showed just which one was truly magnificent Tobias, who in the end also made a noble sacrifice, perhaps taking away some of the 'bastard'.
Though it takes her a while, Egwene from The Wheel of Time series gets there rather quickly once she sets her mind to it. After fooling everyone into thinking that she's a harmless little Accepted that can be pushed around so she gets chosen as the Amyrlin seat, she then convinces a small majority to fully commit to rebelling against Elaida. She then turns around and uses a little known law of the White Tower to force the rest to go along with it. But she isn't done yet, after outright stealing the Tower from Elaida practically she then manipulates a group of Sitters to give her unlimited power to deal with Rand as she wishes. Massive bonus victory points for doing it at a meeting that she wasn't even invited to or even supposed to know about and just showing up anyway and acting as if she was the one running it in the first place.
- Matrim Cauthon, full stop. Gambler, drinker, knife nut, irreverent prankster with not a care in the world ... until you threaten him or the Band of the Red Hand, Tuon, someone he promised to protect, or if you damage his Cool Hat, at which point you're facing the general with several hundred years of combat experience, Ta'veren probability warping, perfect luck, cannons in the medieval setting, repeating crossbows, an anti-magic amulet, his Ashandarei, and in case it wasn't mentioned, the Dark One's own luck. He wooed the Daughter of the Nine Moons with no less than hell and combat, the Old Tongue, the absolute loyalty of his men, and a killcount several times as large as his army. He personally slew the leader of the Shaido Aiel, politely threatened the White Tower, humiliated and saved Aes Sedai repeatedly, defeated an indestructible weapon, has faced the Eelfin and Aelfin no less than three times (it's believed that it's not possible to survive twice, and recurring heroes have died trying once), and gave his own flaming eye to save his friend's lover. He funds armies with games of chance and uses fireworks as grenades.
If people of Secret City read this wiki, Commissar Santiaga would be a trope poster boy for them. Despite being a physically overhelming nearly-immortal Lightning Bruiser and the commander of a whole Badass Army, he prefers stiletto to a big stick and diplomacy and plans (which he has been pulling for several millenia) to violence, while never being afraid to step into the action himself if needed. One of his gambits, pulled after the discovery of other formations growing enough strong to confront his people, lasts for two books and involves three his enemies being manipulated into clashing and badly battering each other. Combine this with his polite, cultured, snarky and charismatic personality, his trait of domesticating defeated Worthy Opponents instead of killing them and willingness to do everything for the sake of his people, and you get a pretty magnificent character.
Samuel Westing in The Westing Game. He disguises himself as a real estate agent and brings people to an apartment he built, including blood relatives and his ex-wife. He even tricks the judge into re-paying her college debts by claiming he was fired.
Marc Remillard in the four-volume Saga of the Exiles by Julian May. Marc Remillard, exiled from the future into the six-million-year past of the Pliocene era, is the quintessential Magnificent Bastard, enthusiastically meeting each of the four criteria for Magnificent Bastardy. In addition to great intelligence, Remillard is a metapsychic operant, which among other things allows him not only to understand people but to control them. Until pushed beyond his limits, Remillard is imperturbably calm, deflecting all attempts to irritate him into making a mistake. He is handsome and shockingly charismatic, attracting numerous operants to his side in the Metapsychic Rebellion in the future and earning the respect of his opponents in the past. Finally, Remillard most emphatically has a goal, and has directed every moment, every mental power, and every bit of Pliocene-era technology toward the attainment of that goal. Even banishment from the Paradise Lost of the future to the Hell of six million years ago is not enough to dim his certainty of his fitness to rule.
Honsou of Graham McNeill's Ultramarines series and the novel Storm of Iron is definitely a Magnificent Bastard. He is a genius at siegecraft, even by the standards of his Legion who are all experts at it; has a knack for predicting how people will react to something based on their personalities; knows how to play his own guys against each other so they are too busy to scheme against him; and he refuses to compromise who he is for anybody, not even the Chaos Gods. He did lose his cool once, when he was beating a rival Iron Warriors Warsmith to death who had always called him a half-breed, and after a lengthy duel with the enemy Warsmith. So it's acceptable.
Nadreck the Palanian from the Lensman series. At one point he devises, and executes, a plan to have an entire fortress of baddies kill each other. Nadreck is so embarrassed that three of them were still alive at the end and he was forced to personally finish the job that he orders the records of the event sealed permanently.
Pennywise the Dancing Clown from It. In the adaptation, he manipulates Henry Bowers into getting revenge on the Loser's Club. He even takes on his deceased friend Belch's form to do it. He loves to screw with the main characters' minds saying that "He'll drive everyone crazy, and then kill them". Mostly, this is for Tim Curry's potrayal of the clown.
The Baron, from Dune. His first scene is him explaining exactly how he's going to take down the Duke Leto. Too bad he didn't count on Yueh planting poison gas on the Duke in exchange for his family's lives. Paul also shows shades of this, but it shines most in the end when he uses his control of the spice on Arrakis to pretty much become the Emperor - of the Universe.
- Even more so Leto II, for whom the book God-Emperor of Dune is named. If his title (which is at most only a slight exaggeration) isn't proof enough, consider that he has full access to his "ancestral memories", and that his ancestry includes Vladimir Harkonnen and Paul Atreides, in addition to any number of Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers who were no slouches themselves.
There's a good reason that Sherlock Holmes holds Professor Moriarty in such high esteem. Mathematical genius, chessmaster extraordinaire, villain with very good publicity, he's so ruthlessly competent at his job that it takes Holmes years to find any evidence against him, and so suavely charismatic that he's got Scotland Yard inspectors (even ones that Holmes respects) eating out of his hand minutes after meeting him.
Inspector MacDonald: He seems a very respectable, learned, and talented sort of man... when he put his hand on my shoulder as we were parting, it was like a father's blessing before you go out into the cold, cruel world.
- Kim Newman's The Hound of the D'Urbervilles, a collection of short stories centered around the misadventures of Moriarty as told from the perspective of right-hand gunman Colonel Sebastian "Basher" Moran, offers a most worthy depiction of the Napoleon of Crime that delights and dazzles in his increasingly impressive capers. To whit, Moriarty outwits just about everyone he comes into contact with, manipulating Holmes, breaking Mabuse, suborning lesser criminals like Raffles and Mad Margie Trelawny, and organizing a huge brawl between underworld forces that puts him out on top.
Alianne from Daughter of the Lioness is undoubtedly a good guy on the side of La Résistance and for at least 75% of the book she's in for her cause purely to save the oppressed slaves, but she is undeniably this rather than Guile Hero. Throughout the course of the series, she makes herself into The Mole for the other side just so she can feed them false information, trains her own fleet of spies, captures moles from other houses and turns them to her side, manipulates the luarin royalty to keep useful people alive, and manages to get the other side's spymaster executed by his own rulers. At the end, when her father visits, she tells him she's so happy to see him... and then reminds him that he knows of the Tortallan spies in her new country's court and that she'll deport them if he doesn't do it first.
Captain Kennit from the Liveship Traders trilogy. He is a handsome pirate captain, sharpwitted, crazily manipulative and achieves being loved by almost anyone revolving around him, including smart characters such as Wintrow or Etta. And there's almost anything he won't do to become the King of Pirates.
Amy Elliot Dunne in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl finds out her husband Nick is having an affair, so on their fifth anniversary she goes into hiding, leaving behind a series of clues for their traditional anniversary "treasure hunt" specifically so he'll inadvertently follow them to evidence and locations that incriminate him; she also spends months forging a diary full of completely invented incidents of Domestic Abuse to make it seem like she was afraid of him killing her, and orders hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive stuff in his name, even going so far as to take his fingerprints and smear them on all the merchandise. But it doesn't stop there- when she decides against letting him take the fall, she kills the Dogged Nice Guy school friend she'd been hiding with and tells the police she escaped after he kidnapped her.
Urfin Jus, the recurring Big Bad of Tales of the Magic Land, starts as a man of sharp mind and immense willpower (he's a Munchkin who completely lacks the characteristic funny cowardness of his people and broke his munching habit at will). Former apprentice of the wicked witch Gingema, he takes Dragon Ascendant Up To Eleven, becoming the only vilain in the series to actually conquer the Magic Land - twice. In the books featuring him, he's shown as the master of manipulation, deception and improvisation, and being much deeper character than others in general - he's basically an adult character surrounded by childish allies and foes, often Only Sane Man. Heavy And Then What? syndrome during his second rule and subsequent exile eventually turned him to Villainous BSoD, but he became too interesting to be thrown off, so he rethought his life over and over again before finally being brought to good by hearted hospitality and forgiveness of his people - only to be tempted almost immediately after by several more opportunities of coming back to power and adamantly refuse them (him delivering Being Evil Sucks speech to Arahna, a gigantic, powerful evil sorceress, is definitely a CMOA). He ends living in the inner peace on a quiet farm and growing delicious magical hybrid vegetables, but still retains his cunning, providing invaluable help to the good guys several times.
Mika Waltari's historical novels:
- In The Wanderer and The Adventurer by Mika Waltari, there's a multitude of them, some very detailed and others in the background. To name just a few: Mustapha ben Nakir (geomailer who claims to do nothing but what his whims tell him, but his "whims" put him pretty much in a position to rule Tunis by screwing over everyone), Suleiman (whose very epithet should tell you this), and his vizier Ibdrahim (though the latter is a little more sincere than most characters in the books and therefore not necessarily a bastard).
- Sultan Muhammed in The Dark Angel. A very definitive moment of his character is when he has conquered Constantinople partly aided by Byzantine nobles betraying the emperor, and as a reward has them executed, but not before tricking them into sentencing themselves.
- Winston Niles Rumfoord in The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. A very important aspect of his character is his ability to see both the future and past perfectly. Additionally, he possesses a regal personality and carries out all of his business with class and dignity.
The tempomancer from the Mediochre Q Seth Series. The Organisation which he Represents is running some kind of major conspiracy (of which they are on the tertiary phase, apparently) to begin with, but he seems to be single-handedly dealing with the all the field work of manipulating everyone to further... what ever it is they're currently trying to further. Over the course of the first book alone, he convinces several characters to trust him, betrays them when he wishes them to fail (often without them noticing) and escapes everything unscathed at the end. When Charlotte joins the adventure unexpectedly, he is unfazed, and his organisation's official line on the matter is "We can work her in somehow". He's such a Magnificent Bastard he outsmarts Mediochre, who pretty-much has "can work out what's going on" as a superpower and almost qualifies for this trope himself.
Rhodes, aka The Sphinx, from Fablehaven. The leader of The Society of the Evening Star, he has been making careful plans for THOUSANDS of years. You learn pretty quick that almost everyone is a mole, and they're all working for him. Infinitely cunning and patient, he has so many plans running at once that no one can ever keep up with him. Hell, not even the Fairy Queen knows his identity. Any time it seems like the heroes have won, there's always one twist that puts some sort of victory in his hands, or else it turns out it was all part of his plan, to the point where the Big Good was really him in disguise all along. Despite all this, he always remains calm, friendly and charismatic. In fact, he's never actually beaten, instead he switches sides after getting usurped by much worse villains, and uses his Magnificent Bastardry to help beat them.
Archie Costello in The Chocolate War. He runs Trinity High School from behind the scenes, using the Vigils and Janza to humiliate or destroy, in Jerry's case anyone who opposes him. The only check on his power, the box of marbles from which a black marble drawn forces him to personally carry out any prank he assigns someone else, turns out to be pretty much useless, as he sometimes uses sleight-of-hand to "draw" a white marble from his sleeve instead of picking one out of the box; the only reason he pulls one in the end of the sequel is because he knew the box had been rigged against him, and just decided to play along. When he finally has to play along with one of his pranks, which makes him the whipping boy at a school carnival, he has built up such a reputation at this point that no one is willing to do anything to him. Oh yeah, and he sleeps like a baby while doing all of this because he alone realizes that no one ever actually had to do anything he ever suggested; it was simply tradition that you always did whatever the Vigils told you to do. The only other person to figure this out was Jerry, whose life Archie ruined. And when he leaves the school at the end of the sequel, he appoints a psychopath to be the Assigner in his place, ensuring that people will think that he was a reasonable person in what he had everyone do.
Erich Von Stalhein from the Biggles series. A member of the old Prussian military caste and Worthy Opponent to the titular hero, Von Stalhein was introduced as a proud, honourable puppet-master playing both sides of the First World War in the Middle East, and his exploits only got more brilliant from there. Biggles usually only managed to defeat him by a combination of dumb luck and Stalhein's incompetent superiors. He even manages to remain one of these when openly working for the Nazi regime, mostly due to being presented as essentially the intelligence service's answer to Erwin Rommel.
King Leck, from Graceling. Being a Magnificant Bastard is basically his grace. Specifically, he can convince people of anything with his words. If his words are just passed down by others, anyone those people talk to will be convinced as well. Even people who know the truth about him are completely powerless against him and his powers. Using this power, he managed to take over as King of Monsea and get everyone to believe he was just a nice, kind old man.
Zabulon in Sergey Lukyanenko's Night Watch, a Dark Other whose power level is Beyond Categorization, is very old and extremely crafty. All Others are able to calculate probability lines, but Zabulon is extremely adept at it. Plus, he has the strength of the entire Moscow Day Watch. He is able to think 1000 moves ahead in any scheme. The only check on him is Geser, his counterpart in the Moscow Night Watch, a Light Other of the same rank who is just as crafty and devious (if less callous and willing to sacrifice his own people).
Oscar Diggs, the titular Wizard of Oz, is a third-rate con man from Omaha who comes to Oz when his balloon goes off course. Within weeks, he has used a combination of fast talk and theater tricks to successfully bluff four Archmages ("Witches") into standing down from all out civil war, and into a state of Enforced Cold War, established himself as king, and sold the real heir to the throne into slavery in the backwoods, disguised as the opposite gender, so no one knows to look for her! How much of his behavior is "Magnificent" and how much is "Bastard" varies with the author.
The Power of Five: The world's magnificent bastards are working for the Nexus: Shang Tsung, a ruthless Asian crime lord, a DGSE spy and a not-so-subtle Rupert Murdoch analogue, are both the villains of another story, but here are vital warriors on the side of good.
Ulric Kerensky, from Michael Stackpole's "BattleTech: Blood of Kerensky" series, applies. During his tenure as Khan of the Wolves, and later ilKhan of the Clans, he outwits multiple rivals both within and outside of the clans. While directing the entire military effort of his clan against the Inner Sphere, resulting in greater military successes than any other leader, he is elected ilKhan to reduce his political sway. In turn, he manipulates the forerunner to take his position as Khan to humbly state he is not worthy of the position during a trial, and thus passes him over for the position as justification to award it to his supporter instead. He then manipulates an enemy commander, Anastasius Focht, into goading the clans into a major battle with serious stipulations...which he knows the clans will lose, but plans for Clan Wolf to come out ahead and gain further prowess in doing so. While he is eventually killed after the series ended, he manages to execute an assault of Magnificent Bastardry along the way.
Chamberlain Yanagisawa of the Sano Ichiro mysteries. The Evil Chancellor of Shogun Tokugawa, Yanigisawa is a master of manipulation, pulling the strings of everyone in the court and secretly exorcizing far more control over Japan than the shogun ever has. Sano and his retinue, samurai who are actually honorable, seem to be the only one routinely immune to his machinations, but even they have been controlled and unwittingly used as pawns in his vast schemes. Only once has Yanagisawa ever gotten caught, because an ally he thought he could fully trust stabbed him in the back; even then, he not only managed to come back and regain the blessing of the shogun, but accumulated more power than before. Sano may solve the crime in the end, but he'll never be rid of Yanagisawa and his schemes.
Ian Ludlow, from the Monk novel, "Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants", who serves as a detective consultant for the Los Angeles Police Department - much the way Adrian Monk consults for the San Francisco Police Department - as well as an acclaimed mystery fiction book author. While Monk's friends think he is simply jealous of Ian Ludlow, it is later revealed that Ludlow is actually a psychopath who writes about his very own murder sprees: He picks out a victim at random, kills them, finds out who the people are in their life, then "volunteers" to serve as consultant for the murder case, where he feeds his own incriminating evidence under the guise of being a brilliant intellect, then makes up his own ending by framing the least likely suspect for the crime. At Natalie's house, while being ransacked by the police, Ludlow arrogantly accuses Sharona and Natalie for two murders Ludlow himself committed, capping off theatrics with a series of twisted, false "Here's What Happened" summations, that ultimately lead to both women's arrest. (Monk ultimately frees Sharona and Natalie once he concludes that Ludlow stole Natalie's credit card to purchase a tool used for one of the murders, and that he had pried into Monk's life and career by doing online research on his various cases throughout the years.)

I think I removed everything we evaluated here but gimme a shout if I dropped the ball anywhere. Glancing through this, I see a few Lighty has expressed interest in, as well as Ravok's Thrawn but other than that is anyone getting any inspiration to EP from these?

Morgenthaler Since: Feb, 2016

#1247: Jun 2nd 2018 at 2:34:35 PM

^^ Regarding Cypher... yeah, I definitely think Sebastian Rooks qualifies. Without getting into spoilers (yet), he's got the style, he's got the plan, and he's probably amoral enough.

edited 2nd Jun '18 2:35:55 PM by Morgenthaler

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010

#1248: Jun 2nd 2018 at 2:45:17 PM

We already voted cut on the Locke Lamora examples pages back. Only the Grey King makes the cut, and I already did the EP and write-up for him.

Senna from Everworld is a cut. Fans can whine long and hard about how she underwent "Character Derailment" in the book where she was killed off, but no matter how you slice it, she's a Smug Snake who depends on magic to force guys into wanting to have sex with her in order to get what she wants, allies with Neo-Nazis, and dies humiliated.

And Then There Were None is a keeper. Curtain's villain is not; he's a CM example, and his motivations are simply too petty and nasty.

Gone Girl example is as unpleasant in the book as she is in the film.

Pennywise is a child murdering Eldritch Abomination, and has no dignity.

The entry for Alianne from Daughter of the Lioness is trying really hard to pretend she doesn't count as a Guile Hero instead, and is doing a very bad job. Move her to Guile Hero.

Moriarty does not demonstrate his credentials in the original Sherlock Holmes stories. Iconic, but a cut.

Montresor from "The Cask of Amontillado" is a dickhead aristocrat murdering a man for having insulted him. His victim is a drunken buffoon, and the crime meant to be horrifying, not impressive. Cut.

The Decline of the West thing is just commentary, not an example. Cut.

Pretty sure Kronos is a cut.

Pretty sure Asriel and Coulter are a cut, though it's been years since I've read them.

Skorzeny...might make the cut despite being a Nazi but you'd have to give me time to reread Worldwar.

Pretty sure Nicodemus is a cut.

Dracula's a metaphorical rapist, and I'm not sure we see him demonstrate the full range of criteria. I could be persuaded to keep though.

Wednesday might count, but that example is really bad, what with its efforts to dodge mentioning that the protagonist's cheating wife died when the car she was in crashed because she blew the driver. Say it outright, or just say Wednesday arranged it (somehow), don't half-ass it.

edited 2nd Jun '18 2:48:05 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Lightysnake Since: May, 2010

#1249: Jun 2nd 2018 at 2:47:47 PM

Alright, ones I know?

Mr. Wednesday from American Gods? Keep him.
And Then There were None Keep. Keep. KEEP. Wargrave is a fantastic example.
Belisarius...umm...probably TOO heroic.
Catch-22: Oooh, one of my favorites! From memory, I'd keep Milo
Count of Monte Cristo: Keep Edmond Dantes.
Cthulhu Mythos:...it saddens me, but I think Nyarly is too evil
Discowlrd: Vetinari is a clear keeper
Dragonlance: Raistlin is an easy keeper.
Dresden Files: Johnny Marcone is a keep, keep, keep. Lara Raith...iffier, but possible. Nicodemus is a 'fuck no'
Forgotten Realms: Both, I beleive, keep.
Gormenghast: Steerpike is a CM, but I think he keeps.
Brandon Sanderson's books Both keep. Especially Kelsier. A brilliant revolutionary who's manipulating EVERYONE.
Prisoner of Zenda: Need to refresh myself on Rupert.
Shogun: Toranaga is an easy keep.
Pendragon: Cut Saint Dane,FAR too evil
Romance of Three Kingdoms: Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi probably keep, as well as Sima Yi's descendant...who WINS the whole game of thrones
New Jedi Order': Oh god, Nom Anor is hard, but he really straddles the line...need to think.
Song of the Lioness: Cut Roger.
Codex Alera: I think those two keep.
His Dark Materials: I think at least Asriel keeps, possibly Coulter, too.
Day of the Jackal: Keep the Jackal
Kushiel's Legacy: I'm gonna say Melisande is a yes as well.
Pillars of the Earth: If anyone counts, it's Waleran Bigod
''Wolf Hall: Easy keep to Cromwell
It: Fuck no to Pennywise
Graceling: Leck is a rapist and scumbag. Cut.
Night Watch Easy keep to Zabulon

Scraggle Since: Nov, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!

#1250: Jun 2nd 2018 at 2:50:22 PM

Yeah, me and Lighty had a talk on the original Nyarly in PM... I'd contend the magnificence of his schemes in Kadath alone but Nyarly being the society-annihilating bastard he is even in the original Mythos screws over any chance he has of keeping, IMO.

To say U.N. Owen is an easy keep would be a major understatement and he's one I'd definitely like to see up sooner than later... most of the ones who are listed as Monsters can be purged. Steerpike I'm willing to hear a case for. The rest I think I conclude with Lighty and Ambar.

edited 2nd Jun '18 2:53:06 PM by Scraggle

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