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.
- Don't delete an EP unless you intend to swiftly repost it. We know that there are reasons why you might want to delete an EP, especially if it's being downvoted - rejection is hard, even in a low-stakes environment like this. However, deleting it renders the current discussion null and void, makes it impossible to reference the discussion in the future and can confuse tropers who didn't read it before the deletion. If the issue is temporary (such as formatting problems or a post getting overlooked as the thread moves on), then deleting and quickly reposting the EP is a valid option, but to fully retract an EP, please use the [[strike:]] markup instead.
- Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").
- If you are the first person to downvote a candidate, please provide an explanation of why when you do so. We're here for discussions above all, and a hit-and-run downvote doesn't facilitate anything.
- If a work is already reserved by another user, please don't comment on the work or any potential characters worth discussion before the discussion date. We know how exciting it is when a work has a keeper that you're waiting to talk about, but it's not fair to the person who reserved the work who is just as excited to lead the discussion to see the discussion getting spoiled before they get to do it. On the other hand, if the reservation only has one name attached, shoot them a PM - they may be down for a collaboration, which will get you in on the fun as well!
- Please keep the thread on-topic. While discussing the trope is fun and we encourage people to enjoy it, questions like "who's your favorite 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 Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2024 at 3:34:22 PM
Shadow Board. Most of their cunning is offscreen and an Informed Attribute.
Maybe the not the exact trope but I'm not seeing enough legitimate on-screen planning from them. Their just largely Orcus on His Throne types, as Rav says. Still a no.
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
Mark.
Here's a two-parter I've had cooking for a bit now. If you've seen my most recent posts in CM, you probably already know what this is...
What's the work?
Xenosaga! Made by the same people that had previously made Xenogears and would later make Xenoblade (but not explicitly connected to either), Xenosaga is a sci-fi head trip of a JRPG full of technobabble, long-ass cutscenes, and Kabbalah symbolism; naturally, it's a bit of a contention whether it's brilliant or utterly pretentious. Thousands of years in the future, humanity is now a vibrant space-age culture, and have been for so long that Earth's very location has been forgotten. There's intrigue aplenty to be had out in the stars, and like any good JRPG it all revolves around a party of player characters:
- Dr. Shion Uzuki, a brilliant but somewhat airheaded young roboticist whose Genius Ditz persona masks some serious trauma. Her greatest creation is...
- KOS-MOS, the game's poster girl, a combat robot in the form of a young woman with a surprising destiny.
- Jin Uzuki, Shion's older brother, a down-on-his-luck physician and wannabe samurai.
- Gaignun Kukai, Junior, a teenage gunslinger who is ostensibly the son of the local gazillionaire playboy; as a matter of fact, they're both clones of the same evil scientist.
- chaos, an employee of the Kukai Foundation who is a mysterious White-Haired Pretty Boy whose job is being mysterious and spelling his name with no capital letters.
- MOMO, a teenage Artificial Human called a Realian struggling with the fact that her "father"/creator, Professor Joachim Mizrahi, is the most hated man in the galaxy and the fact that he stashed some data in her head that the bad guys would very much like to get their paws on.
- And Ziggurat-8, aka "Ziggy," the corpse of a soldier reanimated as a cyborg, who is assigned to be MOMO's bodyguard on the condition that when he's done, he finally be allowed to die completely.
All of them meet by chance and are drawn into a sinister conspiracy revolving around an ancient supercomputer called the Zohar, which is desired by various not-very-nice people - a religious terrorist organization called U-TIC, a deranged assassin named Albedo Piazzola, sinister elements in their own government, a Horde of Alien Locusts called Gnosis and their solar-system-sized Hive Queen, Abel's Ark, and a certain shadowy mastermind puppeteering all of the above.
Confused yet? Good. So naturally we're starting off with the one guy that doesn't give a damn about any of that nonsense. Meet Dr. Sellers.
Who is Doctor Sellers? What has he done?
Doctor Sellers could've been the smartest man in the galaxy if not for one thing, or rather, person - his own mentor, the aforementioned Professor Mizrahi. And he certainly wasn't going to stand for that.
One of the Xenosaga universe's worryingly-high Mad Scientist population, Sellers is a Sinister Shades-wearing, hoverchair-bound genius who in no way resembles a certain Sinister Shades-sporting, wheelchair-bound genius played by Peter Sellers. He is first heard of as a scientist on Mizrahi's staff in his lab on planet Miltia, conducting research on the Zohar supercomputer with the rest of Mizrahi's team. However, Sellers, along with Mizrahi's other apprentice Kevin Winnicott (more on him later), have betrayed Mizrahi to U-TIC, performing experiments Mizrahi does not approve of and ultimately planning on turning the Zohar over to them. Sellers continues his reckless research over Mizrahi's protests even as U-TIC and the galactic government go to war in Miltia's streets over the Zohar, and a horde of Gnosis shows up to claim it too. When Sellers refuses to relent even amidst this chaos, Mizrahi kneecaps him and then sacrifices himself to drop the Zohar and the entire planet with it into a black hole, ensuring none of the warring factions can have it.
Alas for Mizrahi, Sellers escapes and successfully spins things so that Mizrahi gets the blame for the entire war and Miltia's destruction (thus the "the most hated man in the galaxy" thing). Over the next fifteen years he helps U-TIC and its leader, Patriarch Sergius, attempt to retrieve the Zohar, ultimately learning that Mizrahi programmed data into his "daughter" MOMO that would enable Miltia to be freed from the black hole. U-TIC captures MOMO but Ziggy rescues her from their base, and Sellers, proving just how much Crazy Is Cool, responds to this by blowing the compromised base to smithereens. Sellers himself doesn't do much else in the first two games, which climax in Segius retrieving the Zohar and the Omega System, a super weapon it powers, only to be eliminated by the aforementioned true mastermind before he can really use it.
Fast forward a year to the third game. Sellers has been pardoned due to defecting from U-TIC to the government, where he's been placed on a research team led by the evil Dr. Dmitri Yuriev, the creator of Kukai Senior and Junior (see what I mean about the "worryingly high" amount of mad scientists?). He's landed himself quite the laundry lists of accomplishments in that time - he's built an artificial Zohar, the space station Merkabah, rebuilt Omega, and perhaps most impressively of all has reconstructed all the data inside MOMO from scattered fragments and his own memory. The government and U-TIC are at war again, with the Omega hoped to be the government's ace, but Sellers as usual doesn't give a crap, nor for that matter does Yuriev who wants to use the Zohar and Omega to become a god. His final appearance is aboard the Merkabah when the player party inevitably raid it. He pops up in its depths, in what would be blatantly telegraphed as a boss room in any other level...
...and then, hilariously, informs you that he will not be fighting you, instead providing some exposition about Yuriev and his own reasons for defecting back and forth between the various factions - namely, anything to do cool science and prove he's smarter than Mizrahi, right? He then cheerfully hovers away as the heroes gawk, and the next thing we see is them escaping the station as the tide of Gnosis swarm over it and assimilate it into Abel's Ark. We're never told if Sellers manages to make it out, but given that he would obviously know the station, and thus its escape routes, better than you, one can't help but wonder...
Intelligent? Charismatic? Thinks on his feet?
Sellers is the rare Driven by Envy character that actually works for it - he's not an Entitled Bastard at all, he has a genuine industriousness in his attempt to prove himself Mizrahi's superior in genius. And as can be seen from his EP, he has a laundry list of genuine accomplishments to his name. He's also smart enough to Know When to Fold 'Em when up against the party, and as a result is ultimately the only major antagonist to survive the series... unless the Gnosis ate him offscreen, of course.
Bastard? Too much?
Sellers is the image of "amoral, but not immoral," Wernher Von Braun-style (considering he's a parody of a character who was a parody of Von Braun...). He'll work with U-TIC, Yuriev, and all and sundry other slime in the galaxy, but there's nothing personal or sadistic for him, it's just all about the science. He enables awful, awful things to happen, but one gets the impression that if he felt the path to scientific greatness came through doing only good things, he'd do so in a heartbeat.
My literal only hang-up? At one point in the Mizrahi flashback he insults the then-newly-created MOMO by referring to her as a "doll." Artificial human personhood is a huge theme in Xenosaga, and anyone who denies it is automatically a villain. It's literally one comment, but given the themes I thought it was worth a mention.
Verdict?
Honestly if it wasn't for that "doll" comment he would IMO be the cleanest keep in the series, even more than the aforesaid "true mastermind" who, as you might guess, is the next EP. What say you?
Sellers
Apologies on my Madagascar writeups being delayed, a mixture of Real Life and I've sort of hit a writer's block with the Penguin's writeup. It'd be best for me to do each one a separate writeup?
What's wrong D-16? Rise up!So I have a candidate
What's the work? The Reckoners Trilogy (a.k.a the Steelheart Trilogy) is a young adult fantasy novel series by Brandon Sanderson. The story takes place after an red object dubbed Calamity appeared near Earth, causing seemingly random people to develop superpowers. The superpowered individuals however, dubbed Epics, are near-unanimously violent megalomaniacs who turned against humanity, conquering most of the world and dividing it into epic-ruled fiefdoms. All Epics have a a single, specific weakness that can counter their powers in some way, that being humanity's only chance to resist. The story revolves around the Reckoners, a group of human freedom fighters who resist by assasinating Epics.
Who is Prof? What has he done? Jonathan Phaedrus, AKA Prof, is an powerful Epic who maintained his original personality- which is extremely rare, since all Epic's superpowers come with a "darkness" or a "rendering" that compels the user into evil the more they use their abilities. Initially attempting to form a Super Team with fellow benevolent epics, Prof was forced to kill his friends when they fell victim to The Corruption. Jonathan would them create the Reckoners, a covert group of guerrila fighter Cape Busters which resisted the Epic warlords. Prof also personally led one of the Reckoners's main cells, keeping his true nature hidden from his subordinates and mantaining his humanity by using his powers frugally and secretly sharing his powers with his teammates- using a few devices he supposedly "invented". Prof was also one of the main contributors of Knighthawk Foundry, a facility that used Epic DNA/tissue to create technology that mimics their powers.
During the first book, Prof reluctantly agrees to let David join after he gives them a chance to kill Steelheart, an indestructible and extremily powerful epic who rules over Newcago (Chicago). Prof leads his team into sucessful sabotage missions against Steelheart's regime, and creates a fake epic called Limelight to draw Steelheart into a duel. He also starts using his powers in the open again, saving David from Steelheart's foot soldiers and later facing off against Steelheart itself. During the second book, Jonathan takes David and his significant other Tia to Babilar (Epic-ruled NYC) after its ruler, Prof's Evil Former Friend Abigail/Regalia, sends multiple minor epics to attack liberated Chicago. There, Jon survives an encounter with the Ax-Crazy Fantastic Nuke epic known as Obliteration, and saves multiple civilians from Regalia's minions. Prof attempts to kill Megan/Firefight, a former reckoner who was in truth an epic and a spy, using a elaborated trap that emotionally manipulates her into a position where she would be vulnerable to her weakness (fire). Later, during the climax of book two, Jonathan sacrifices his humanity by using his powers to the max in order to save Babilar from a Obliteration-based nuke, becoming a fully corrupted epic.
As limelight however, Prof retains his strategic talent, effortlessly wiping out multiple Reckoner cells. Discovering from Regalia that Calamity is actually a living being and the source of the superpowers, Prof adopts her plan to overthrow Calamity and become the ultimate epic. Moving to Ildithia (epic-ruled Atlanta), Prof quickly conquers the city by press-ganging multiple local epics, before going on a manhunt for Larcener, a powerful Power Parasite that ruled Ildithia before, hoping to find a way to take advantage of Larcener's power to drain Calamity. When he discovers that David and the surviving reckoners are in town and sheltering Larcener, Prof creates an elaborate plan to destroy them completely, first by giving them a fake deadline to lure them into a false sense of security, them lauching a raid with both other epics and human ground troops equiped with powers and weapons specific to counter the reckoner's skillsets. Jonathan only loses because David figures out his weakness in the last moment, with Larcener seizing the opportunity to steal his powers. With his personally restored however, Prof is unhindered by the loss of his abilities, and even risks his own live to save David during his encounter with Calamity.
Is he magnificent/Is he a bastard? Prof is a manipulative and ruthless epic hunter, a competent leader, and during his stint as a supervillain, a cold-blooded and efficient killer. He also always has a plan, and is highly strategic overall. His powers also add to the magnificent factor, as he is both Strong and Skilled in their use and has badass showings even while holding back. While he comitted some pretty hefty atrocities as Limelight, such as killing his former subordinates and innocent civillians alike, Jon suffers from agency issues, and shows remorse in a few moments (such as when Tia dies due to his actions).
Conclusion?
For me, he is a keeper, but it's up to you.
Edited by mammothhide on Aug 11th 2023 at 3:17:28 AM
Prof; seconding that being an excellent first EP.
And now to conclude the Xenosaga saga, the guy that every last bit of sheer WTF in this universe orbits. Meet Wilhelm.
Who is Wilhelm? What has he done?
Wilhelm is the centuries-old CEO of Vector Research and Development, the "bad" White-Haired Pretty Boy to chaos' "good" one, and in this universe of complicated villainous Gambit Pileups, the one mastermind to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Wilhelm is the single most important person in the entire galaxy - he invented the Unus Mundus Network, the faster-than-light travel method that makes space-age civilization possible, and many other fantastic technologies as well. His hobbies include listening to Wagner operas and having vague conversations in his office with his bodyguards the Testaments, who all wear color-coded Plague Doctor outfits, and who are all people Wilhelm has brought back from the dead:
- Black Testament, the eldest, is a former cyberterrorist named Erich Weber who was an old for of Ziggy's when he was alive (this backstory is locked behind a Japan exclusive flip phone game god dammit
).
- Red Testament, the leader, is Dr. Kevin Winnicott, Joachim Mizrahi's apprentice, Shion's late fiance, and with her the designer of KOS-MOS; the robot accidentally killed him on its first activation.
- Blue Testament is Luis Virgil, a Jerkass colleague of Shion killed rather early in the first game.
- And finally, the assassin Albedo, after dying in the second game, is revived as White Testament.
Wilhelm doesn't do much in the first few games, and indeed helps out the main characters on occasion; in addition as Shion's boss one might actually mistake him for the Big Good if not for the creepy plague doctor pals. He drives off a Gnosis swarm attacking the Kukai Foundation's space station with his own fleet, and at the end of the second game he sends the Testaments to assassinate the wicked Patriarch Segius after the party defeats him in battle and all his minions abandon him for his more charismatic second in command, Cardinal Heinlein.
Ultimately, we only learn the true extent of Wilhelm's plan in the third game. As it turns out, the man called Wilhelm is a sort of living security system for the universe, and he's not centuries old, but millennia if not eons - he's been in a corporeal form since at least the time of Jesus (yes, that Jesus), and his function is, essentially, to ensure that the universe itself keeps existing - individual living things mean nothing to him. As Wilhelm, he founded Vector to guide galactic civilization, and adopted another identity as well - none other than Cardinal Heinlein, second-in-command - now Patriarch - of U-TIC. Yep, he's Running Both Sides, all in the name of a galactic 4-D chess game to get everyone and everything into position for his endgame - eternal recurrence. See, Wilhelm has decided that he's going to save the universe from itself and its "inevitable" destruction, and the best way to do that, he figures, is by restarting it, over and over and over again; it's implied he's already successfully pulled this off dozens if not hundreds of times. And to do that, he needs the right pieces of the puzzle, and he's created a scenario in which they'll all be delivered right to him:
- KOS-MOS, who is actually the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. Yes, that Mary Magdalene. If you know nothing about Xenosaga, you still may know it as "that one where Mary Magdalene reincarnates into a robot." As the "partner of the Messiah," she has the ability to guide human souls to a specific destination.
- Shion Uzuki, who is the reincarnation of "the Maiden," supposedly Mary's best friend. To get her on his side, he sent Kevin to seduce her and then traumatically die in front of her, poisoning her against the current universe.
- The Zohar, which in his two identities, he manipulated U-TIC and the government into recovering for him.
- The Vessels of Anima, ancient power sources that supplement the Zohar, which currently serve as the energy for the Humongous Mecha piloted by the main characters, both good and evil.
- And last but certainly not least, The Zarathustra Mechanism, a device created by the original Mary as a failsafe to save the universe, and is the thing that actually does the big reset. Wilhelm knows exactly how to get at that, and so he created the entire Federation vs. U-TIC vs. Gnosis conflict to get everyone else to bring everything right to him!
It all comes to a head in the amazing-looking crystalline caverns beneath planet Michtam, where the Zarathustra rests. After a final dungeon that is basically just a straight shot through the remaining bad guys in ascending order of their importance to the plot, the party confront Kevin and Wilhelm at the bottommost cavern, where Kevin actually briefly succeeds in tempting Shion to come along with him by exploiting her trauma over all she's seen and done, but she quickly snaps out of it after watching Kevin use Electric Torture on her assistant Allen, who has a huge crush on her, when Allen defies him. The party beat up Kevin and confront Wilhelm, who reveals... all of that mess that I described up there. To make matters worse, a Gnosis horde descends, who are actually mutated human souls called by Mary to be funneled to the next universe.
Wilhelm tries to get Shion to go along with him, and when she refuses, he tries to force the issue with a bit of painful energy bombardment... aaaaaand cue the energy spear through the back compliments of the badly-wounded Kevin, whom it turns out did genuinely fall In Love with the Mark. Even that doesn't stop him from trying to go ahead with the plan, but the thing that does? When he's also defied by KOS-MOS, who refuses to continue the role of Mary, and chaos, who it turns out is a similar sort of being to Wilhelm but wants to preserve individual lives. The Zarathustra mechanism goes haywire and absorbs the other robots to create a "battle" form, but the party destroys it and the mortally injured Wilhelm and Kevin fade away, with Wilhelm pondering the future of uncertainty humans have now created for themselves...
Intelligent? Charismatic? Thinks on his feet?
Wilhelm is, well, king of the hill in the game of cosmic thrones. He plays every single faction in the galaxy like a harp from Hell, all in the name of saving the universe from itself, or so he believes anyway. His "running two sides of a war in different identities" angle is similar to Palpatine, but Wilhelm is not power-hungry or needlessly sadistic, he's just doing his job for the universe.
As you can probably tell, Xenosaga is VERY complicated and confusing (once heard it described as "puts Evangelion to shame") but you can effectively tl;dr the whole thing into the following sentence: The entire series is ultimately just Wilhelm gaslighting the entire galaxy into being his MacGuffin Delivery Service.
Honestly the only potential mitigating factors are: that he seemingly didn't account for KOS-MOS/Mary defying him, which is the sole thing in the entire game that genuinely shocks him. It's only momentary, though, and he ultimately faces the end with grace and even curiosity at what comes next. Also, he might be too much of a force of nature.
Bastard? Too much?
Dude engineered at least two wars, many Gnosis attacks, ruined lives in the billions if not trillions to get what he wants... yeah, definitely a bastard. It's nothing personal with him, just his God Job, but the continued existence of people and other living things mean nothing to him as long as the universe itself continues to exist.
Verdict?
Literally the only argument I can see being used against him is the "force of nature" one. Apart from that, he's an absolutely, well, magnificent keep.
Behind on voting, but I just like to say me and Rav reserved Full Circle.
There are no keepers, everyones either in over their head, relying on sheer dumb luck that doesn't go there way, or just painfully oblivious. The closest anyone came to counting in my mind is the main investigator Mel Harmony (Zazie Beetz), who's very clever and manages to figure things out quickly. However she has a very abrasive manner which if she'd been more successful I'd be willing to write that off, however she ends the series being suspended for one year due to her drive to both solve the case and alienate everyone around her. In addition her main claim to bitchdom is domestic violence accusations from her ex. While we never see her engage in violent behavior towards her, given the themes of the work, her general abrasiveness/attitude, especially towards her ex, I'm not inclined to think the ex is lying.
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 midSkipping the ones that seem to have consensus...
Not sure how I feel about Hall. I feel comfortable writing off the ending no one actually gets, but the realistically bad ending seems like I should matter more than it's being presented as.
Finch because the child eating seems like a side-effect of his species and isn't played for too much horror.
Board for reasons already stated.
to Sellers, Wilhelm and Professor Phaedrus.
So a new Homestar Runner game shadowdropped onto Steam
... Imma just snatch that one up for discussion, not terribly confident it'll have keepers but we already have one up from the same spinoff series so its far from impossible lol.
Huh, neat.
Wilhelm and Sellers.
By the way, aren't Xenoblade and Xenosaga technically are related to each other? Yes I have played Future Connected, in case anyone asks.
Eh, good enough.

So, this is gonna be an very unusual entry.
What is the work?
Blood Debts is a movie about "Vengeance in the tradition of ''DEATH WISH'!" The opening of the film has a gang killing a girl's boyfriend, then proceeding to assault and then kill her. Unfortunately, they soon learn that you shouldn't try doing this in front of her father who happens to be a Vietnam veteran.
Who is the Candidate?
Mark Collins, after being wounded by the gang that killed his daughter, eventually recovers and begins to systemically hunt down them one by one, vigilante-style. This catches the attention of Bill, who kidnaps his wife Yvette to force him to do his bidding under the claims of killing criminals that deserve it. However, as revealed by his conversation with his henchman, it's actually to eliminate his rivals from the drug trade. Sure enough, once that happens, Bill goes back on his word and attempts to kill Mark with a car bomb, which takes the life of Yvette. Unfortunately, that fails, and Mark rampages through Bill's compound, eventually coming face to face with the man himself. However, as soon as Mark is shot by Bill, he reveals a mini grenade launcher underneath his sleeve and blasts Bill with it. Cue the infamous ending:
Is he Magnificent?
He's basically those action heroes you see in a cheesy b-movie. He makes what defines the movie as So Bad, It's Good: The over-the-top kills he makes and his vigilante justice on criminals, while also evading the police at every step. When the police finally catch him, it's only because he willingly turns himself in after successfully avenging his daughter and wife.
Is he a Bastard?
As expected of a vigilante. One particular scene I like to note is when an group of thieves steal $200 from an old man, Mark effortlessly pushes off one of them attacking him and shoots two of them dead, before shooting the bald thief in the head when he tries to beg for his life. Still, he's still far above Bill who is essentially a drug lord.
Verdict?
Maybe. You decide!
Eh, good enough.