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}
to Skrull Captain America.
Not the Eye
to Grinch and Captain Scrull
Skrull Captain America.
- Honor Society:
- Honor Rose is desperate to get out of her town and into Harvard. When her perverted guidance counselor Mr. Calvin tells her there are three other students (Kennedy, Travis and Michael) in the running for his recommendation she decides to sabotage the competition. She first manages to get Kennedy's play running and Travis in the lead while also helping Travis come to turns with his sexuality. While their grades to begin to suffer she ends up bonding with them. Meanwhile she goes about trying to seduce Michael, but ends being charmed by him instead and abandons the plan. When Calvin tells her she could still get the recommendation by sleeping with him, she declines. Later she finds out Michael was playing her for a fool. Briefly heartbroken, Travis and Kennedy convince her to help put on the play and newly reinvigorated, she ends up blackmailing Calvin with his proposition, telling him to give the recommendation to Kennedy. She ends the film bowling with her friends, content with the fact that even if she doesn't get into Harvard, she'll be fine.
- Michael Dipnicky is the resident school loser and nerd. When he realizes Honor is trying to sabotage him, he goes about charming her instead. He first notices her handmaids tale book and quotes from it, while also making her think he lives in a foster home. When she inadvertently runs into him near his own home, he pretends to break in while covering up evidence that he lives there, further charming her. In the end she abandons her plan to sabotage his grades. When she finds out what he did, she is heartbroken and he points out that she does have heart of gold underneath her fake exterior, helping Kennedy find herself and Travis come to terms with his sexuality. Meanwhile he's not pretty enough nor athetic enough to be liked by the school body so he decided to stop trying. Ultimately he wants to get into Harvard. And he ends the film nearly seconds away from getting the recommendation from Mr. Calvin to get into Harvard.
I'm Sad Frogerson.
I almost did an EP for Skrull Captain America back when I did a huge chunk of characters from the show, but I backed out at the last second because I thought I was proposing too many characters from the same show, and figuring Veranke covered the Skrulls well enough on her own.
But in the years since and with a lot of the characters I proposed for that show getting cut, I'm giving a for Cap!Skrull.
Caesar
Yes to the Grinch and Skrull Captain America!
WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!
Skrull Captain America
To Imposter America
Yes to the Grinch and the Skrull of America!
to Capatain Skrull and the Grinch. When did the classic animated Grinch get removed?
A Girl, Just One of Many Kinds
What’s The Work?
Fairly OddParents BROKE Its Own Rules! (Nickelodeon) is a theory created by Film Theory runner Matthew Patrick about the television series The Fairly OddParents! which centers around Da Rules constantly being broken, leading to the theory today about Da Rules being complete lies, which we’ll discuss today.
Who is Jorgen Von Strangle and What Does He Do?
Jorgen Von Strangle is the central character of the theory, being the lead enforcer of Da Rules, the comanding officer and “Strongest Fairy and Fairy World.” However, the theory ultimately goes That Jorgen was secretly plotting a century planning system to bring fairies back to defeat The Darkness and revitalize Fairy World’s economy.
The theory goes that, after the battle againts The Darkness, the population of Fairies decreased and over the years they focused on becoming GodParents for lonely and miserable children. Jorgen, however, knows about the Darkness returning and been preparing for it coming back and to bring Fairies back to make them into a Fairy army and rebuild Fairy World’s economy.
He created the fake system of rules, tweaking them over the centuries in order to create a situation in which the God-Kids mess up the world so bad the Fairies are no longer needed and must return to Fairy World. This is the reason he allows the ruling of allowing kids to run the world, thus making it so The Pixies to rule the Earth, showing he knew and planned for something like this to happen in order to bring Fairies back to do jobs again. He later helps and pulls a temporary sacrifice to have Timmy, who he dislikes, stop the Darkness once and for all, while he protected the fairies from it by keeping them in a gum ball machine. And by the end, it proved to help as the end of the show has Jorgen succeed as more Fairy are doing jobs within Fairy World.
Is He Magnificent?
Very much so. He’s portrayed here as a Well-Intentioned Extremist and The Chessmaster who’s been building his plan for centirues, tweaking fake rules in order to open the door for a situation in which Fairies must return to Fairy World to rebuild the economy of the world as well as build an army to defeat The Darkness, allowing the Pixies to take over as the dominant species, and by the end he wins in defeating The Darkness and the Faries now pursing careers within Fairy World, succeeding in his overall Goal.
Is He A Bastard?
I’d say so, as he imposed a fake system through Da Rules and tweaked it around, allowing The Pixies to take over the world in order to bring the Faries back to train them to rebuild Fairy World and defeat the darkness,.
Verdict?
Ayup
Keep Fighting. Keep Loving.
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Alright this is one of the weirdest proposals I've done for this thread but I mean they tick both boxes of Magnificence and Bastardy? Gonna be a chunky EP since it's they're major characters in 4 films.
What is the work?
Madagascar is a trilogy of films made by DreamWorks Animation. To keep this short, there's a cast of Funny Animal(s) with an All-Star Cast behind them. The first film follows the main characters ending up the titular island, the second one they end up in Africa then in the third one they end up traveling the globe with a circus. Now a majority of the main characters are purely on the side of good...except a quartet who are a good dosage of Comedic Sociopathy for this trope me thinks...a quartet of penguins consisting of Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private. I'll also have another EP from the franchise who'll be much shorter to read through.
Who are the Penguins and what have they done?
Sick of being confined to the zoo, the penguins try to devise a plan to escape it and head to Antarctica. To try and escape their enclosure, the penguins attempt to dig out by using cutlery they rob from tourists—having two of them distract them, one rob the cutlery and the other use them to dig out, eventually coming upon Marty the Zebra's enclosure. After Skipper has a chat with Marty about how animals don't belong to the zoo and that they're heading to the wild, the penguins depart leaving Marty with thoughts of leaving the zoo. The penguins are then seen at Grand Central Station where they're captured along with the main cast by animal control.
Aboard a boat to Africa, the Penguins devise a plan to take control of the ship when they realise the boat won't head to Antarctica. Escaping their crate and knocking out several crew members, the Penguins eventually reach the captain's room. Despite not knowing how to take control of the boat straight away, Private eventually manages to override the ship's system, allowing them to travel to Antarctica. Eventually arriving to Antarctica, the Penguins decide the icy plains suck so they pilot the boat again, eventually coming to Madagascar and reuniting with the main characters.
When the penguins are informed Marty went to find Alex (who's isolated himself out of fear his carnivorous tendencies would make him hurt his friends), the Penguins devise a scheme to retrieve him, remembering him from their zoo encounter. When the Fossa give chase to Marty with the intent on eating him, the penguins intervene by distracting them with a flair gun and using Private as bait to draw them in as they repeatedly hold them off although eventually numbers do almost overcome them until Alex arrives and basically terrifies the Fossa to flee. The penguins sort out Alex's carnivorous issue by giving him seafood. They're last appearance in the film is musing to themselves to "smile and wave" at the main characters when they try to use the boat to leave, not knowing that the fuel tanker is empty.
Building a makeshift plane from the ruins of a crashed one on the island, the Penguins manage to set up a massive slingshot to allow the main characters to get off the island, succeeding for a while although the plane eventually runs out of fuel, causing it to crash. Although the plane almost nose-dives into the ground, Skipper tells Rico he's had his fun so Rico eases the plane to glide down—still causing it to crash in the process.
With the plane in ruins, the Penguins devise a new plan to try and rebuild it with a brand new design. To acquire materials to help them with this, the penguins devise multiple schemes by robbing tourists in the African reserve of their vehicles, leaving the humans stranded. (This is noted to happen to multiple groups.) Realising due to the lack of numbers and their flippers (Private: "Darn you Darwin!"), that it'd take them multiple years to make the plane, the penguins see an out to their predicament when the two chimps Mason and Phil return with a whole comogongolote of chimps who the Penguins use to help them build the plane.
When Alex gets captured by the stranded human tourists after he goes to try and stop the water blockage they had caused, the Penguins and the main characters end up rescuing him with the plane and after a miscommunication end up busting the dam blocking all the water, allowing it to return to the reserve. With the gold that the animals had discovered earlier during the water shortage, the Penguins depart to Monte Carlo although intending on coming back to pickup the main cast.
Concerned the Penguins weren't coming back to pick them up, the main characters make their way to Monte Carlo to try and get back to them. And what have the Penguins been doing in Monte Carlo? Having the time of their lives with their riches and having Mason and Phil act as a human to allow them to engage in the casino. When the main characters end up botching a plan to break into the casino the Penguins were in, forcing it to go into lockdown and alerting animal control Captain Du Bois (the Big Bad of the third film), the Penguins and the heroes escape within what Skipper refers to as the "Luxury Assault Recreational Vehicle".
Intending on rendezvousing with the chimps on the plane, characters are then given chase by Du Bois and her cronies—within them getting rid of all of them apart from Du Bois although they do briefly get away from her by using Kowalski's nuclear reactor in the van to boost it. Meeting with the chimps and the plane, the main characters get on the plane and engage in another chase with Du Bois, ultimately ending with her falling into a pool. When the plane crashes again due to the gear assembly being damaged and the chimps fleeing due to "lenient France labour laws". The main character end up boarding a train with an animal circus troupe. When one of the members Vitaly cites that the circus owner doesn't allow stowaways, the Penguins intervene when they overhear the conversation from above the train by stating "the circus owner may allow stowaways if the stowaways just happen to be the owners." Cut to Phil and Mason in disguise using some of the gold and jewels from Africa to buy the circus deed from the current owners.
Plot stuff happens, although the Penguins discover Du Bois is on the heroes trail and is kept on alert to make sure she's kept at bay. After the successful London performance, Dubois arrives to the heroes and intends on taking Alex back due to him being a missing lion. When Alex switches on the walkie talkie to the Penguins to alert them of her presence, they stealthily take out Dubois' cronies before having her and the cronies tied up and blasted out the circus cannon. Third act argument cliche happens forcing the main characters to leave at New York (although the Penguins stay with the circus with fake tears about how they lied to "us circus folk".) When they return to the zoo, they're ambushed by Du Bois who tranquilises them...and King Julian who wonders off. When he returns to the circus crew, Kowalski realises the dart in Julian's tail meant that Du Bois was responsible and that the main characters were ambushed.
The Penguins then organise "Operation Afro Circus Rescue" by utilising the circus animals to defeat Dubois' goons and briefly send her briefly into retreat after she gets launched into a wall. After Alex defeats Dubois, the penguins and the main 4 stay with the circus although when Alex asks Skipper what he did to Dubois, it's revealed he had her and her cronies locked in crates similar to the first film and sent to Madagascar with them all tied up as well.
Alright tbh in the Penguins of Madagascar film, they still pull off a lot of cool shit such as hijacking multiple planes by leaping from one to another and infiltrating Fort Knox effortlessly and film the showcases their thinking on the feet in the prologue when Skipper, Kowalski and Rico as babies rescued Private in an egg from a ship full of leopard seals. And it the film goes into more how they do care for each other but ultimately there's nothing really worth bringing up for it but it doesn't negate them for bastardness either IMO since they don't change their personalities outright.
Are they magnificent?
I mean yes? The Penguins are quick to thinking on their feet and showcase on performing many great feats throughout the films. Without them, most of the major situations the main cast get into wouldn't have been sorted out if it wasn't for the Penguins. Now they're a quartet and have distinctive personalities but they operate as a team and they do truly care for each other (most showcased in the 4th film.)
Alright to address any possible hiccups:
- Private and Rico might not have the right personality, with Rico being mostly silent except for some manic sounds and Private is a simple minded Nice Guy. I don't hold this against them though because their personalities don't negate how competent they are with their actions.
- In the second film Skipper is in love with a Hawaiian bobble doll and gets blackmailed by Phil and Mason when they threaten to show photos of the two around the savannah. And Skipper panics when the doll gets shot by Nana at the dam but then the doll gets fixed with tape so it's alright in the end? The doll is missing from the 3rd film so there's that.
- Now they have moments of confusion with certain human devices but these moments are Played for Laughs and never interfere with them when they're pulling acts of magnificence (Example? They're having a pillow fight in Monte Carlo and then when a feather pillow bursts on Skipper's head, they're all mortified thinking the pillows are filled with baby birds.)
- Skipper tends to use terms like commies and refers Vitaly as the Rushkie...except he has no issue with Vitaly as a person well tiger? So I'm not exactly holding it against him since he's not going on tirades about them and whatnot.
Are they bastards?
Surprisingly yes? The penguins do a lot of morally messed up things. Here's a quick list of a select few:
- They assault the human crew on the boat transporting them with Rico repeatedly slapping the captain after having him Bound and Gagged. Skipper makes a dark joke to Gloria about killing them but then reveals the Penguins put them on a "slow lifeboat to China"...they're in Madagascar.
- After the plane crash in the second film, Skipper asks for a body count and when they think two of the characters have died, he takes it as a number he can work with and they all high five.
- They rob human tourists of their vehicles, leaving them stranded and in one instance attempt to murder Nana when she gets kicked off the jeep with Private asking if she's dead, Nana sitting up, Skipper saying "No" before accelerating the car to hit her then driving off.
- After a miscommunication due to a chain of chimps leading to them going to destroy the damn, they intend on using the large basin Alex and his father is in as a battering device, with Skipper noting "there's no greater sacrifice than somebody else".
But ultimately it's played as callous Comedic Sociopathy but they're still showing no remorse with when they commit these crimes. They breach it enough for the type of film it is for me tbh.
Final Verdict?
What say we?
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
Voting for someone based off a fan theory is weird. I'm gonna abstain on Jorgen until some more discussion comes in about this kind of fiction.
As for the penguins, after doing some reading here and there on the characters and going on what I remember from the movies, I'm not going up vote them as a group since I have a couple of issues with individual members.
Private is the butt of too many jokes for me and too much of a Butt-Monkey to be magnificent in my mind. Similarly, Rico is a little too insane for my tastes as he can barely form coherent sentences.
On the other hand, I'm fine with Skipper for being the leader and Kowalski for being the smart guy of the group.
So ![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
for Private and Rico, but for Skipper and Kowalski.
Edited by LoreDeluxe on Aug 6th 2023 at 11:38:28 AM
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
Caesar
More than happy to say Yes to the Penguins as a whole, Rico is Crazy Is Cool personified and while Private can be a bit of an airhead who gets subject to slapstick, he's the heart of the group and has plenty great moments of his own...so I'm fine with all 4 myself.
WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!
A good to Penguins as whole.
Edited by DukeNukem4ever on Aug 7th 2023 at 6:14:47 AM
to the Penguins.
Abstain on Jorgen.
Yeah to Skraptain America - I'll do my post on Secret Invasion at Midnight over here if I'm awake.
Sure also to the Penguins. Surprised to say but yes.
to the Penguins. Damn, these guys never crossed my mind
Not the Eye
Suprised to Pinguins
Buzz
Before I upvote the penguins, do we need to consider the spinoff movie and TV Show as well?
Image Pickin' Backlog
Classy, Refined, Unstable
To quote Tom Mac Grath (the creator of the characters and voice actor for Skipper) about the TV series:
So I'm willing to take the cartoon as its own thing, hence why I didn't bring it up.
I also gave a brief bit on the film but there's nothing really to go into there on it.
Edited by WetFlannels on Aug 7th 2023 at 1:20:53 PM
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
I’m not sure about the penguins as a whole but maybe just Skipper because he’s the leader
You know what, never mind, after some consideration I decided they can all count. Yes to the penguins
Edited by LarryT on Aug 7th 2023 at 5:28:05 AM
In honor of Akira Toriyama
to the Penguins.
To the Penguins aka The Breakout Characters of the Madagascar franchise (so much so they got their own special, tv show, and movie)
BORK
To the penguins.
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]")
Skrull Cap
"No running in the halls!"