Old Magnificent Bastard thread
Welcome to the Magnificent Bastard (MB) cleanup thread! This thread is where we clean up or cut already-existing entries.
If you're looking to add new entries, please see the approval thread.
IMPORTANT: Before you begin any discussions on this thread, please see the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List
Here, you'll find explanations of the criteria for the trope as well as our rules/procedures for approving and cutting candidates.
What goes through this thread?
- Cut requests. If you believe a MB has been approved and they do not count, this thread is where you propose their removal. To know how to go about this, please see the FAQ folder on the Administrivia page, where the process is explained in detail.
- If we ever need to consider cutting multiple examples without individually reviewing them (e.g. if we discover widespread plagiarism with a particular troper's MBs), the initial discussion will be on this thread and we'll then escalate to the mod team (as described here) to get a formal consensus if we decide to recommend a mass cut.
- If an entry was put on the wrong subpage/YMMV page, you may propose where they should be moved to.
- Full rewrites of existing entries, including expansions, trims, and ground-up rewrites. If your rewrite is approved by the thread, feel free to add it to the drafts page so that other users can check grammar and the like before it is included with the rest of the weekly swaps.
- If an entry on a work's YMMV page doesn't match the entry on the media subpage, you can bring it here to discuss which entry works better.
What does not go through this thread?
- New candidate proposals - as stated before, those are done on this thread.
- Unapproved wicks - if a Troper encounters either of these kinds of wicks, they can be cut with no approval.
- Any MB link on a non-YMMV page - as a YMMV trope, it should not be linked on those pages regardless of any cleanup effort. The only exception is if the wick is being used within the definition of another trope.
- If an MB link on a YMMV page refers to an unapproved character. If it refers to an approved character on any such page, the wick can stay. On the other hand, if the unapproved character being linked to sounds like they might have promise (and you don't feel like checking it out for yourself), feel free to mention it on the approval thread - someone may already know why they don't count, or it could invite a brand new discussion!
- Proposals for images, quotes, and videos of already-approved MBs - quotes and images are proposed on the approval thread, while videos can be uploaded normally as they are screened for approval by the moderation.
- Crosswicking examples to YMMV pages - if an example has already been approved and added to the main page, you do not require any special permission to add the example to a work's YMMV page (assuming the work has a page already). If a YMMV page doesn't exist yet, then you can make it yourself, but either way, feel free to just add the example without asking.
- Small changes to existing entries - these can simply be done on a Troper's own prerogative with no approval.
- Spelling and grammar fixes.
- Pothole changes.
- Minor rewordings.
- Spoiler tags.
While these changes do not require any kind of approval, it is requested that should you make any of these changes, you do one of the following:
- Make the same changes on the relevant Sandbox page, then add the Sandbox to the list at the bottom of the drafts page. This will add the Sandbox to the weekly swaps and ensure that the edits end up on the relevant locked page. If the Sandbox is already listed, then once you make the edits, your job is already done!
- If you don't know how the Sandboxes work or simply don't have the time to find it, then you can simply post on the thread about the changes you made. Someone else can then make the edit on the relevant Sandbox and add it to the weekly swaps.
- Alternatively, you can simply request that the change be made directly to the locked page on the Locked Pages thread. Members of this thread keep track of that one, so we will ensure that the changes are made in the Sandbox so that it doesn't get deleted during the next swap.
Again, these changes don't require any approval, but we prefer to keep the entries on the YMMV pages and the locked pages the same in order to avoid any miscommunication or errors between entries, so if you do make the change, we would greatly appreciate it if you could ensure the change is made on the locked page as well.
As a final note, we do not care what other sites have to say regarding whether or not a character counts. We have our own criteria and they have theirs for their MB equivalents; while they are similar, they are not exactly the same and should not be treated as such. Another site removing a character from their equivalent should not be a reason why a cut is proposed here, and if this is the case, it will likely lead to mod intervention.
Other than this, once again, welcome to the cleanup thread, and we look forward to your contributions!
Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 14th 2024 at 11:36:43 AM
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
On MagnificentBastard.Disney, Miss Ni is in the TV series section but shouldn't it be listed in the Disney Animated Canon section in the Other works folder? You know since The Emperor's New Groove is from the Disney Animated Canon.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Jogo
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'd say it's better to move the entry to the Other works folder of the Disney Animated Canon header.
Also I think we can keep Akua, even if her final steps in her journey are rough, she does recover from those rough moments and ends on a high note.
"Stand proud, Sukuna, you are strong." | He/Him
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Has the original series Ceaser been discussed? I know that he is not as ruthless as his reboot version but he still gets very brutal in the Conquest of Planet of the Apes with some clever strategies.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 21st 2024 at 9:58:51 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
I checked I don’t think so, but I could be wrong. Wouldn’t hurt to do a proposal anyway. I say go for it. 
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
So, am I good to move Miss Ni on the sandbox?
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
That's fine with me. Likewise I think I'm good with Akua.
Lies and Violence!
Have a cut from Skulduggery Pleasant.
- Billy-Ray Sanguine, the self-styled hitman "deluxe", is introduced as Baron Vengeous' frequently vexed Hyper-Competent Sidekick, but grows out of his cruel vitriol after finding love to become far more intelligent and perceptive than initially thought. After killing a group of rich college psychopaths out of a desire to not be defined by his job as a bad guy, Sanguine forms the Revengers' Club for revenge against Valkyrie, but abandons his vendetta upon learning that she's already destined for far greater suffering. Sanguine later steals the Receptacle key to help stop the Remnant outbreak before entering into a relationship with the possessed Tanith Low, assisting her in stealing the God-Killer weapons that could be used to destroy her Dark Messiah Darquesse only to secretly keep them for himself after faking their destruction to ensure the world's safety. Later inserting himself as Skulduggery's spy within Darquesse's minions, Sanguine pushes Tanith to turn against her messiah and rescues her afterwards even though she subsequently loses her memories of their relationship, escaping Darquesse's wrath himself despite the goddess' suspicions. Hilarious as he is psychopathic; reliable as he is misfortunate; and genuinely in love with Tanith, Sanguine ultimately dies in a fight to protect her from the Black Cleaver.
This was one of the very first effortposts I made, so I will fully admit that I wasn't as good at judging these cases when I wrote it. To make a long story short, Sanguine is one of the most popular and hilarious antagonists in the series, being an effective and snarky hitman who slowly grows a heart over time. However, the reason he's so hilarious is because he's a Butt-Monkey Smug Snake, at least in initial stories.
To go over his appearances:
- Playing With Fire: A decent introduction as the Hypercompetent Sidekick for the Big Bad, but he whines, complains, and gets pissed real easily when he starts losing, ultimately being pathetically forced to help the heroes at knifepoint in the climax.
- The Faceless Ones: Pretty much fulfills the same role, except... well, see the above problems but amplified. Once he receives a major injury from Valkyrie that disables his powers, he freaks the fuck out and books it in a rage.
- "Death and Texas" short story: The beginnings of a turn around. He's far more honorable, easily adapting to his injury to exact some vigilante justice on some young serial killers.
- Dark Days: Still a cocky bastard who orchestrates a massive revenge plot as petty revenge for his injury—plus has one of his plans horribly backfires on him—but again shows himself to be more honorable and intelligent than previously, quickly squirming his way out of the problems caused by said backfiring plan to escape with the mcguffin needed for his ultimate goal. He also lets hostages go when he no longer needs them, and drops his whole vendetta when he realizes just letting Valkyrie live to face her destiny will be vengeance enough.
- Mortal Coil: Helps the heroes out, but gets frequently mocked and complains a lot due to his injury + a later gunshot wound. His role is basically to just be lugged around as transportation. He is instrumental to saving the day, pickpocketing the key to the mcguffin they need to stop an army of ghosts even whilst horribly injured, but him being a whiny The Load is more prominent.
- Kingdom of the Wicked: Kind of just hangs around and, again complains about his injury while he finally gets it healed.
- "Trick or Treat" short story & The Maleficent Seven: Completely hits the mark. He's again charming and brilliant, co-masterminding a convoluted, world-spanning heist while secretly keeping their prize for himself—his demon-possessed girlfriend, Tanith, wants to destroy god-killers capable of killing her Dark Messiah, so he pretends to destroy them only to hide them away so they can be used to save the world later on.
- "Eyes of the Beholder" short story: Again fits perfectly, performing an Assassin Outclassin' on three of his former associates.
- Last Stand of Dead Men: Mostly just hanging around again, though there's one notable scene where he's being an asshole to his romantic rival, who proceeds to easily goad him into a fight and pummel him to the ground with no one (not even Tanith) really caring.
- The Dying of the Light: An excellent ending, at the very least. He smuggles the god-killers to the heroes, misleads the Dark Messiah into assuming he's loyal and passes the heroes info on her. He still has moments of being a dick or in over his head, but he's at least self-aware about when he's in the latter and capable of quickly crawling his way out of those situations. There is the matter of his death, but I've always been unsure on how mitigating that should be. He's fighting an immortal assassin and eventually puts a massive hole through his chest; overconfident and thinking he won, he doesn't notice the assassin jumping on him from behind to slit his throat. It's a bad move on his part, but I've never been sure if he knew the assassin was immortal, and in any case, it could be reasonable to assume that putting a massive hole in its chest should have been enough to incapacitate the thing.
The main issue though, is his smugness. It's significantly reduced with each appearance, which was my main argument for his original proposal, but it's always present, with even his penultimate showing featuring him rubbing in his success to his rival's face only to be easily humiliated. If we were just taking his final appearance on its own, or if the stuff in his penultimate appearance didn't happen, I'd be absolutely fine with keeping him. But as is? His pettiness is too recurring and too much of a staple of his character, and while I'm willing to argue he ultimately does grow out of the worst of that by the end, it's far too late in the game for me to feel comfortable listing him as an MB, since it's still present even in his second-to-last book.
Yeah, I'll say cut Sanguine with that.
Watched Eye in the Sky and I can vouch that Colonel Katherine Powell makes the difference and was absolutely spot on. She was gorgeous and brilliant.
Angry babby
Am I crazy, or did not all of the edits made on the recent swap to Western Animation show up on the page? They show up in the page history but I can't find them on the page. I'm sort of new so I'm not sure if this is common or not, or if I just really badly Failed a Spot Check.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
The Moron
This is a problem we've had for a few pages recently, the Western Animation page in particular. It was reported already but Kory seems stumped as to why it's not working. Basically, you didn't miss it, and the admins are trying to fix it.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Feb 27th 2024 at 4:12:33 AM
Lies and Violence!
That's been an issue before, no idea what the problem is. I think last time someone fixed it by submitting a bug report.![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
Edited by EmeraldEmperor on Feb 27th 2024 at 4:12:34 AM
Lies and Violence!
Sorry to double post, but any other opinions on Sanguine?
Jogo
Cut Sanguine
"Stand proud, Sukuna, you are strong." | He/Him
Not the Eye
Cur Sanguine and keep Akua
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Cut
pronounced 'Scraggle'
Hey, all, I've got a character from Infinity Train who needs to be cut from this trope ASAP:
- Magnificent Bitch: Mirror Tulip, aka "M.T.", is the sentient reflection of Tulip, dedicated to asserting her free will and identity. Forced to mirror Tulip's actions against her will by the system of the Mirror World for years, she tricks Tulip into swapping places to pass through the Chrome Car while planning to strand her there, her scheme only failing due to not knowing she is restricted to reflective surfaces. M.T. relents, letting Tulip attach a mirror to her body and travels the train cars for months, evading the Flecs only using a can of black spray paint. Gaining companions and an appreciation for them as she uses her wits to discover the solution for numerous cars, M.T. kills the Flec Mace and even throws an elder passenger from a transport pod in her quest to reunite with her friend Jesse. Her plan halted thanks to her nature as a denizen, M.T. still manages to recover from her Heroic BSoD and outwit the train's robotic conductor to join Jesse in the human world under her new identity, "Lake".
Lake is neither magnificent enough for this trope nor bad enough, and particularly the latter. Nothing she does is remotely bad enough; the worst she does is attempting to swap places with Tulip, which is portrayed not as "magnificent" but a move of pure, ill-considered desperation.
Nothing she does in season 2 begins to approach the borderline for this trope. She kills a villain (in self-defense, which she explicitly points out to his Revenge Before Reason partner) and throws an old guy out of his pod (which is a jerk move, yeah, but it's not dwelled on nearly long enough for it to count as "evil" or even that amoral—and again, most importantly, it's portrayed as an act of poorly thought out desperation, not genius scheming).
Maybe, maybe you could argue Lake goes through enough character development at the end to make up for "magnificence," but I'm sorry, even allowing for amoral Anti-Hero-types, Lake is nowhere near bad enough to be on this trope. Cut her.
Edited by Starkrafty on Feb 28th 2024 at 11:51:31 AM
Watch for the sign of the Saint — he will be back!
Not the Eye
Cut Lake
Goku Black
Cut lake.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Cut lake.
You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the mid
Jogo
Cut Lake
"Stand proud, Sukuna, you are strong." | He/Him
Cut Lake
Showtime!
Cut Lake
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
Woagh
While I'm on the subject, I’d like to go over Akua Sahelian again, since I believe my original effortpost
was too quick to brush aside her mishaps as things she eventually got over through character development. I do think she overcomes her issues, but I’d still like to be thorough and revisit some of them.
To begin: Akua in the first half of the series is just as arrogant and cruel as she is brilliant; a racist, classist piece of work who happily slaughters thousands of innocents as a mere contingency to her twelve different master plans. When she looks to be on the edge of victory with Cat as her slave, however, Amadeus contacts her and is holding her father hostage. He forces her to spill some secrets in exchange for letting him go (both acknowledging there’s no reason for him to keep his word, but it’s not like she has any other options), and Akua does so… only for Amadeus to then allow some of his minions to murder her father, technically keeping to his oath since he personally didn’t harm him. Akua flies into a rage, giving Cat enough of a distraction to break free and murder her.
So she’s outwitted and loses her composure bad… but her father’s being held hostage, so personally, I can forgive her getting emotional. Especially since he’s one of the few people she genuinely cares about at that point in time; her upbringing in the Dread Empire emphasized putting one’s ambition above all else and killing off anything that could weaken you, so Akua isn’t used to dealing with loss like that.
For the next half of the series, Akua returns as a ghost who works for Catherine–initially because her soul has been enslaved, and then because it’s fun. As that happens, Cat subtly begins manipulating her into a Heel–Face Turn, intent on having Akua grow a conscience and torture herself with guilt for all the war crimes and genocide and stuff she took part in. Despite what that may sound like, Akua manages to hold her composure pretty well for approximately 1.5 million words; she remains clever and sassy, overcoming her prejudices and the Stupid Evil lessons of her youth to become genuinely charming and an invaluable asset. There are a few moments where we see her reflecting or being confronted about her past, and she gets broody about it, but it’s nothing to stop her from being her usual effective and bombastic self.
…And then the final book, Book 7, rolls around.
Cat’s plan comes to fruition as Akua finally realizes the enormity of what she’s done and goes through the Despair Event Horizon, knowing that no one will ever be able to love her or accept her for her crimes. At first she betrays Cat to try to return to her old ways and reclaim some measure of control, and though that feels hollow, she doesn’t think she has anything left, so she surrenders herself to the seemingly inevitable fate of forever going through the motions of villainy, what she believes to be a fully deserved and self-inflicted hell. She even recruits the brother of one of her victims to follow her around and provide constant emotional abuse, and he even goes so far as to save her life once he realizes how miserable she is simply by being alive, much to her suicidal despair.
Amadeus, of all people, manages to knock her out of her self-pitying spiral and convinces her to help his plan to destroy the Dread Empire. From then on, she resolves to be the only one to control her fate: not the mother who molded her into a power hungry monster, not the Dread Empress or the immortal abomination known as the Wandering Bard who wanted her to replace the former, not even Cat. Only herself. And she chooses to be good, no matter what the consequences are for her. Akua, for the remaining two-thirds of Book 7, proceeds to go back to being just as clever and delightful as always, giving advice to Cat to pull her out of her own Despair Event Horizon while implementing several other amazing plays.
Even when the aforementioned brother returns right before the final battle for some last minute additional verbal abuse, Akua responds in a much more composed manner–still angered and with bitterness over how thoroughly she’s fucked her life, but merely in a snippy and melancholy tone compared to her prior breakdowns, and she ultimately comes out of the flagellating conversation viewing it as helpful in figuring out… well, what she should do with herself:
A noose or a knot.
(This “knot or a noose” thing has been a recurring beat where she wonders whether advice/metaphorical rope she’s been given is either a knot that can be untied to free herself or a noose with which she’ll destroy herself; considering what ultimately ends up happening, it’s a knot)
I linked to my original effortpost at the top, but to make a long story short, Akua is the one to defeat the invincible web of schemes of the Wandering Bard, cutting through them all to bind herself to the god and become her equal: the Misfortune to her Fortune, the Calamity of villainy to her Providence of heroes, forever cursed to serve Hell but content and happy to do it if it means canceling out the Bard’s plans while making the world a better place.
The final phase of her redemption is a rough, rough time for her, and it definitely doesn’t help that it occurs so late in the game. However, she ultimately emerges from that crucible stronger than ever, and uses the lessons she learned to close the series by single handedly outwitting the immortal, omniscient abomination that had, until that point, been playing everyone–Cat included–to her tune, with her final fate to be eternally guiding future villains in avoiding the same atrocities she engaged in. Combined with her previous effectiveness, I still believe she overcomes all her breakdowns to become genuinely (and in theory perpetually) magnificent in the end.