Old Magnificent Bastard thread
Welcome to the Magnificent Bastard proposal thread! This is the thread where new Magnificent Bastard examples are vetted, approved, and written up. If you're looking for the general cleanup thread (for cuts, rewrites, expansions, and the like), please go here
Important: Before suggesting any new examples, please read the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List; if you have any questions, the odds are high they are answered there. Additionally, please check here for the earliest date a work can be discussed (usually two weeks from the U.S. release date) and whether the work has already been reserved by another user.
Here is how the process works:
- If you have a candidate to propose, you can simply come right in and propose them! If the character's run is brief, such as a single issue of a comic book, then a simple summary of their actions and any potential mitigating features will be enough; for longer-running candidates, an effortpost (EP) might be helpful for organizing the proposal. An EP is not outright required, but please be mindful that if a post becomes too clunky and unorganized, it can be very hard for other people to follow.
- After the proposal, there will be a 72-hour discussion and voting period, where people may ask questions and vote on the candidate. The number of upvotes must outnumber the downvotes by at least five for the character to be considered "approved".
- Three days after the proposal has been made, if the character has been approved, you may post the writeup (the text to be posted on the trope page itself) on the thread and send it to the drafts page. Your candidate will soon be added to the MB subpage. If the work has a page, you should add your candidate to the relevant YMMV page. Voila! It's that simple!
Outside of this process, we do have a few ground rules:
- To keep the thread moving at a reasonable pace, there are some restrictions on when a proposal can be made. There should only be a maximum of four EPs posted both per page and per hour to ensure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle; additionally, each individual troper should only be proposing or writing up characters from a maximum of three works at a time (from initial proposals to end of their voting period). If your proposal would fall outside of either of these guidelines, we'd like to ask you to please wait until they would fit within; feel free to type them up on an outside document, and then when the time comes, you can just copy, paste, and post!
- No plagiarism of any kind. This is a very serious matter site-wide, as the website could get in actual legal trouble over this; as a result, this can very quickly lead to mod intervention. This can take many different forms:
- Direct plagiarism, i.e. wholesale copying. This is not only the easiest to find, but is also the most likely to warrant quick moderator intervention. To be clear, quoting in some places is perfectly acceptable, but it has to be very clear you're quoting from something else and it cannot be anything longer than a sentence or two - if you're quoting an entire work summary from Wikipedia, no one is going to believe you've actually consumed the work, so even if you cite your source, your candidate will be downvoted anyway.
- Self-plagiarism. Even if you can prove that you wrote the same text in both places, the site itself can't contain any of the duplicated text. If you already wrote something once before, it's not too hard to write it a second time.
- Using another site's work as a template for a proposal. Just because you don't copy and paste something directly doesn't mean it's any harder to detect if you're basing parts or all of your proposal on text someone else wrote. To be clear, this doesn't violate site rules and won't lead to mod intervention, but just like if you directly plagiarize, no one will believe you've consumed the work if you're clearly basing your proposal on something else. This thread largely operates on the honor system, and tweaking someone else's work to pass it off as your own is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
- Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").
- If you are the first person to downvote a candidate, please provide an explanation of why when you do so. We're here for discussions above all, and a hit-and-run downvote doesn't facilitate anything.
- If a work is already reserved by another user, please don't comment on the work or any potential characters worth discussion before the discussion date. We know how exciting it is when a work has a keeper that you're waiting to talk about, but it's not fair to the person who reserved the work who is just as excited to lead the discussion to see the discussion getting spoiled before they get to do it. On the other hand, if the reservation only has one name attached, shoot them a PM - they may be down for a collaboration, which will get you in on the fun as well!
- Please keep the thread on-topic. While discussing the trope is fun and we encourage people to enjoy it, questions like "who's your favorite MB" are off-topic and can lead to thumps. That's the kind of question to take to people's PMs if they're willing. Similarly, while we encourage friendliness and familiarity with other users, posts should always have some kind of thread-relevant purpose; for instance, if you want to wish someone a happy birthday, feel free to, but if it's the only thing in the post, it's off-topic and needs something else alongside it. Again, though, while we strive for a friendly atmosphere, this is not Facebook; life updates are fun, but unless they have some kind of impact on your thread participation, please do not bring it here - we have Yack Fest for that.
- Please refrain from asking anything along the lines of "How Did We Miss This One?" In almost every case, the answer is simply "No one thought about it before". This Is a Wiki where everyone has different interests, and the fact that people missed a particular candidate, even one that seems like a textbook example of a trope or a character who is particularly iconic in pop culture, means absolutely nothing. The question is disruptive, has a simple and consistent answer, and provides nothing to any discussion.
- If you are suspended from other parts of the website, it is still possible to participate!
- For users who are suspended from editing the wiki, you still have full access to this thread. You can propose candidates and write them up with no issues whatsoever; while you will have to ask someone else to post the entry to the relevant pages once it is done, all write-ups are considered thread-approved - as in, done by consensus - and thus doing so does not violate any rules regarding meatpuppeting.
- If you are suspended from the forums, your participation is limited but not impossible. It is still possible for a forum-suspended user to assist in creating the write-up for a character who has already been approved; as previously mentioned, write-ups are inherently considered a consensus-based edit and thus not tied to any one particular user. However, you can not assist in the proposal of a character; as a proposal is based around the forum rather than the wiki, doing so with a forum suspension qualifies as meatpuppeting.
- Please keep all discussions "in-house".
- What other wikis use for MB equivalents is irrelevant here.
- Please be wary of using other wikis, Fandom or otherwise, as sources of information. They are just as fallible as a site like Wikipedia in regards to accuracy because they can be edited by any user, just as this site can.
- Do not attempt to force a communication with an author in an attempt to gather evidence or settle a debate; besides the fact that this is a YMMV trope and thus author intent has variable weight depending on the circumstance, doing so may cross the line into drama exportation, which is prohibited site-wide.
If you would like to use an EP for your candidate, here's the general format. This format does not have to be followed exactly, but these are the main topics that need to be covered:
What is the work?
This is a brief summary of the work you're going to discuss. We don't need a full plot summary here, just however much we need to understand going into the discussion — it can even be as simple as quoting the summary on the work's page.
Who is the candidate and what have they done?
This is essentially the character's biography — who they are, their story, their goals and methodology, and, preferably (though not required), what happens to the candidate at the end. It does not have to include every single thing they ever do — for some characters, we'd be here all day if that was the case — but it should include the highlights of their journey.
How are they Magnificent?
This is the point where you highlight the character's brilliance. How to they convey their intelligence and charm to the audience? What makes them stand out among the crowd? What are their goals and how do they go about accomplishing them? This part welcomes a lot of creative thinking — not everyone has to be a Machiavellian Diabolical Mastermind to be worth considering here! This is also the time to showcase how the character can think on their feet if it's necessary.
How are they a Bastard? How are they not too bad?
What kinds of moral lines is this character willing to cross for the sake of their goal? Are they willing to let innocents die? Start wars? Commit crimes? The character has to show some kind of unscrupulousness in order to count as a "Bastard". Notably, this character does not necessarily have to be the villain, and an Anti-Hero can cross the line if they're immoral enough, but they have to be immoral somehow.
This is also the section where you then state your case for why they're not too bad. Perhaps their good intentions help mitigate their crimes. Perhaps others are shown to be much worse than them. Perhaps they're prone to Pet the Dog moments or are even fighting on behalf of loved ones. Whatever the case, there are certain lines that an MB can't cross, but as long as their villainy is reasonable for their goal, they can be considered.
Final verdict?
This is where you post your final conclusion on the character in question. You can continue elaborating on your reasons or even just say a simple "yes" or "no"; at this point, we've heard everything we need to hear.
And that's everything you need to know. Welcome to the thread!
Edited by Twiddler on Jan 17th 2024 at 5:40:56 AM
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
IDW!Black-cat.
RIP Toriyama
There's now a crowner for the MagnificentBastard.Spider Man pic so y'all get in there and vote!
Write-up for Kalisha:
- The Tapper Twins: Kalisha Hendricks is a sixth grader at Culvert Prep. During a school-organized scavenger hunt, she leads her team to second place with a mixture of foresight and efficient use of the subway, beating the liberally loophole-abusing Girl Posse and only losing to Reese's team due to their use of another loophole. During the elections for class president, Kalisha teams up with Reese against Claudia for extra social studies credit, and frames Claudia as a soccer-hating, child-strangling monster, while consistently outperforming her campaign manager Akash. When Reese accidentally undermines the message, Kalisha uses an online game to get the votes of the nerdy kids, and, when that attempt is sabotaged by the local Cloudcuckoolander, quickly shifts the blame to Akash and Claudia to the school paper. Despite Reese's loss in the election due to either Claudia's manifesto or Reese's own unwillingness to become president, Kalisha is considered the smartest person in the school, and handles her loss quite gracefully (though she is implied to beat Reese up after learning he might've sabotaged her attempts).
Writeup for Otto Apocalypse finalized at exactly 200 words.
As I am suspended from editing the wiki, the draft will have to be added to the MB draft list by someone else, with additional input from moderators as to make an exception to meat-puppeting.
"They played us like a DAMN FIDDLE!" — Kazuhira Miller, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Thanks for the heads up. I'll add it now. If you do another mind "unwrapping" the potholed bits, i.e.: "[[TragicVillain Otto Apocalypse]]" for "Otto Apocalypse"? That way I can copy-paste it into the drafts. Cheers!
Edit: I added it in and cut it back to eight potholes since that's the limit we use for an entry of that length while keeping the relevant character pages. If you'd prefer I used some of the other potholes you'd chosen and take out some of the ones I left please lmk.
Edited by 43110 on Jun 17th 2023 at 5:46:44 AM
The Moron
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This thread is an exception to the meatpuppeting rules (since all entries are considered "thread approved", thus not made by one particular user) so you're all good on that front right off the bat!
Star is correct, we in fact have some regulars who don't edit and this is the process we've been told to follow, all's well!
All potholes are good, thanks!
Edited by AnoBakaDesu on Jun 17th 2023 at 5:59:35 AM
"They played us like a DAMN FIDDLE!" — Kazuhira Miller, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Goku Black
Alright. Next up from Generator Rex. And first Non-EVO. Anyway in the show, their is a group of assassins called the six who are ranked as the most dangerous in the world. So I have two members to discuss. Sort of. The last is weird.
Who is Dos?
The second most dangerous man in the world, Dos (played by Carlos Alazraqui) is a former team mate of six and apprentice to the group's leader one. A dapper elderly Spanish gentleman. He's also the most ruthless and cold blooded of the group. Anyway The six's leader One ended up becoming infected and started turning into an EVO so they've all been searching for a cure.
Dos surfaces in "Divide by Six", where he and the rest of six ambush rex. He and others fight Rex as a test. Dos is an expert swordsman with his cane sword thing and and is able to dodge all of rex's attacks. Eventually tripping him and using knockout gas to capture rex.
They explain their plan to Rex but Dos and six have clashed as Dos thinks One is too far gone and it would be a mercy to kill him instead. Still he and the others are willing to see what rex can do. One escapes and is discovered to be incurable which means that Dos wants to put him out his misery. Anyway Six refuses and they clash. They ambush rex whose trying to get one back to safety. Holding him down while Dos finishes him off. Six arrives to help and he's able to beat the others but Dos counters everything he has and uses his knockout out gas to throw hn f2f balance before hitting him.
It takes Rex creating an entirely new weapon system out of pure rage to help his friend that he's able to beat the others and Dos is able to still dodge his attack. In fact he actually keeps up with him remarkably well and is only beaten after a though fight. Anyway One is dying but is able to rex talk to the others and thank them for being the best apprentices he could have. Leaving Dos as leader.
'Magnificent?
The entire six are all great. But Dos is the best of the bunch. His tricks are Just skill in the ability to pull off some great moves with the others as their leader. Like an ambush, a skilled take down and nearly defeating rex and six multiple times. It's telling six was wining till he came around and that he still put up a right against the both of them when the others folded pretty fast. He's also a charismatic, Spanish gentleman played by Carlos (which is way against type when you know he's most known as Mr. Crocker).
'Bastard?
He's the most ruthless of the six. And even six notes that he never shows mercy....but he also genuinely cares for his mentor and sincerely didn't want him to suffer like this. And not super bad for this show.
Conclusion?
I have one more after this. Than I'll hand off lighty.
Edited by miraculous on Jun 17th 2023 at 3:05:14 AM
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Yes there mir and having talked it over with you, much excitement for your ultimate post!
To Dos (I think I know who your ultimate post may be)
Not the Eye
Goku Black
Oh Uh. Guys. I actually passed Van Kleiss over to lighty. As doing him and white knight who appear in like every second episode would be a pain. A long with doing all these.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
No worries, still happy to see this one filling out for you bud!
Not the Eye
Looking forward to you final Rex candidate Mir.
to Hyde & Zeke, Abe Henry, Otto Apocalypse, Jack McCoy, Urara, Felicia Hardy and Dos.
Edited by MGD107 on Jun 17th 2023 at 3:32:50 AM
Well looking forward to you have to EP Mir (along with who Lighty will EP in Rex Generation)
Ultimate Moral Compass
2
Edited by therealjackieboy on Jun 17th 2023 at 3:51:18 AM
"No running in the halls!"
Dos.
Was talking with a few others about a certain old cartoon called League of Super Evil, which I realized hadn't been checked for candidates yet.
So here we are. The EP will be for the Kinder Creep.
What is the work?
League of Super Evil is a CGI animated cartoon and one of the most acclaimed series by Nerd Corps Entertainment (who also gave us Slugterra, Stormhawks, and Dragon Booster). It is overall their first comedy oriented series featuring a lot of lighthearted slapstick.
It focuses on a trio of wannabe supervillains (the titular League) but are so incompetent they are largely Harmless Villains. We have:
- Voltar, the leader who is a literal Small Name, Big Ego pint-sized Big Bad Wannabe, who is more interested in petty pranks than actual villainy
- Doktor Frogg, resident Mad Scientist and Butt-Monkey whose experiments and inventions hurt him just as much as they work.
- Red Menace, the League's muscle but is actually a Gentle Giant without a single evil bone in his body.
- Along with Doomageddon, their doomhound capable of interdimensional teleportation and a tendency to eat everything (including other League members)
The series has a Slice of Life format following their daily mishaps and attempts to become a big league villain team, but usually failing.
Their town is however home to many genuinely formidable supervillains and superheroes, most of which dismiss L.O.S.E. as being an insignificant joke.
Anyways, onto our candidate.
Who is the Kinder Creep and what has he done?
In place of Christmas, the villains of Metrotown celebrate a holiday called Chaos-mas, and their version of Santa Claus is the Kinder Creep, who delivers presents to villains who have been evil enough each year. In contrast to Santa, he uses the toilet instead of the chimney and gets rancid milk/cookies laid out for him.
The League due to never having done anything particularly evil before, have never been visisted by the Kinder Creep. Which gives Voltar an idea for his latest scheme, to disguise as Kinder Creep and his elves, then sneak into all the villains’ homes and sabotage all the delivered presents by licking the batteries.
Eventually they come across the home of Skullosus, the No. 1 supervillain. But to their surprise, there are no presents waiting for them. Turns out they arrived before Kinder Creep, who promptly shows up then and there. Voltar is skeptical and believes Kinder Creep to be an imposter like them, but after verifying his identity (by pulling on his beard), a pissed off Kinder Creep attacks. Bombarding them with his toilet plunger blaster, then proceeding to beat Voltar up.
The commotion wakes Skullosus up, who is surprised to see two Kinder Creeps, while getting upset he hasn’t received any presents. The real Kinder Creep mockingly puts Voltar on the spot, forcing Voltar to BS up an answer to keep Skullosus from destroying him. Skullosus also notices the uneaten rancid cookies and milk, to which Kinder Creep once again thrusts the duty onto Voltar, where he gets force-fed the rotten snacks by Frogg to appease Skullosus.
With Skullosus satisfied, the League make a run for it, while being pursued by Kinder Creep. They manage to return to their lair and climb back up through their toilet, where they try to lock Kinder Creep out by closing the toilet seat lid. Only for Kinder Creep to enter via Voltar’s secret private toilet. Taunting the League when they try to hide, Kinder Creep tells them what they want is in the living room.
The terrified League go to check what he means, only to discover to their delight that Kinder Creep left them all presents. Turns out he was so impressed by their scheme to ruin Chaos-mas for everyone, he decided they deserved presents after all.
How is he Magnificent?
For a silly slapstick show, Kinder Creep is one of the more competent and honorable antagonists to be showcased. He manipulates Voltar into having to appease Skullosus, while demonstrating a lot of badassery when he fights and pursues the League.
He’s charming enough too, with him spouting Rhymes on a Dime, while being being very polite as he rewards L.O.S.E. in the end.
Bastard?
Okay this one he might just scrape by on.
First off, Kinder Creep is a Bad Santa who encourages and rewards evil deeds from all the supervillains each year. Then in more direct encounters, he does subject Voltar to the torment of calming Skullosus, along with making him eat the rotten snacks, which clearly causes Voltar discomfort and nausea.
All in all, while it’s very lighthearted and silly, the show still pushes that he’s not supposed to be a good person.
Final verdict
Keeper?
Edited by Snowy66 on Sep 23rd 2023 at 4:26:44 AM
Anti-Santa.
To Anti-Santa
And yes to Dos
With unanimous assent, your Wes Anderson double bill:
- Bottle Rocket: Mr. Abe Henry is a master thief who runs his operations under the guise of a lawn services company in Texas. Alternately encouraging and crude to his subordinate thieves, Henry is an expert at reading people and plays on the insecurities of protagonists Anthony, Dignan, and Bob to pull a job robbing a cold storage facility for him. The job is a disaster, but Henry couldn't care less, considering his actual objective was keeping the trio busy so he could steal all of Bob's expensive furniture.
- The Grand Budapest Hotel: Ludwig is a genial, elderly criminal locked up at Checkpoint 19 in the Former Republic of Zubrowka. When Gustave H. is incarcerated there after being framed for murder, he wins Ludwig's respect by beating up one of his gang, and is allowed to join the gang's plan to escape. Ludwig has memorized the entire layout of the prison and created numerous supplies to assist in the getaway right under the guards' noses, lacking only digging tools, which Gustave arranges to be smuggled in inside parties. Succeeding in their escape plan, Ludwig and his gang cheerfully bid Gustave goodbye before just as cheerfully hijacking a passing bus to make good their escape.
The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."