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
Ultimate Moral Compass
I'm stilling saying ![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_down_emote.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
to Hazama. Way to sadistic and petty for his own good.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Again, though, that's all Terumi. The closest Hazama gets to pettiness without Terumi's influence is telling Trinity that he hates the look in her eyes before he goes into the Cauldron, which really isn't worth losing sleep over.
Do note that the EP focuses on Hazama after he becomes distinct from Terumi - i.e. t throughout Central Fiction.
Edited by Iceaura39 on Aug 17th 2023 at 3:43:46 PM
It is I, the narrator, categorising addict and writer of books you haven't read.
Yes, but even post-Terumi Hazama shows both some bigoted tendencies in the way he treats Makoto and engages in some extreme acts of sadism. While his motives are deeper, he is still not an MB in my opinion.
Edited by Riley1sCool on Aug 17th 2023 at 8:47:06 AM
Hazama.
Agreed on Hazama there.
I have one example I've been wanting for a while, too:
What's the work?
Planescape: Torment is, to put it in no uncertain terms, one of the best videogames ever made. You are the Nameless One in the city of Sigil, a mysterious and scarred being awakening in a mortuary without memory and approached by a floating skull. The Nameless One has a tattoo on his back thatmapparently draws in tormented individuals and is left to pick up the pieces to discover his own mysterious past that connects to a variety of past incarnations.
The game is known for its incredible writing, with maybe some villains keeping. One is the subject f this EP: Trias the Betrayer.
Who is Trias?
Trias is a Solar, an Angel. He is also a Fallen with a unique perspective of the multiverse. Trias grew dissatisfied with the Heavens' stance on Creation.
To put it simply, the lower planes, Hell and the Abyss of the lawful evil devils and the chaotic evil Demons respectively, are locked in an eternal conflict known as the Blood War. Neither side has any real hope of winning, but the Fiends scourge parts of the multiverse and do horrible damage. But the perspective of the heavens is they do less damage than if the Blood War wasn't a thing to keep them occupied with so many resources.
Unfortunately, Trias's attempt to do this was not exactly well received. Trias attempted to whip up an army of fiends to storm the gates of heaven. Knowing this would be defeated but with the hope it would inspire heaven to get more involved. He, uh, lost and was cast down and imprisoned near the town of Curst, a town of betrayers that was something of a gate to the lower planes.
Still plotting, Trias left a pawn in Curst: Fhjull Fork-Tongue, a Devil enslaved by a curse for Trias to be forced to do acts of good and charity (this is hilarious as he's a being of evil and this is torture for him), while luring in the Nameless One...manipulating the team to perform an act of kindness by returning his sword, Trias is free and directs them to Fhjull for more help.
Trias plots to sacrifice Curst to fulfill a pact with the lower planes, and thus dredge an army of Fiends to attack heaven. This means, again, the angels and Devas will be snapped from their complacency and finally get more involved. the fact that he's going to sacrifice a bunch of innocents means the heroes are opposed and tae him on.
Trias is eventually beaten and a choice awaits the heroes: spare Trias or kill him, but there's more: the Nameless One can redeem Trias and remind him of the mercy and forgiveness of the heavens.
Only problem if the Knight Templar Vhailor is in the team, he will kill Trias for his crimes regardless
mitigating issues?
No, not at all, honestly. Trias is charismatic, intelligent, a fiendishly good plotter and his ultimate goals are benevolent. If wholly warped. He's devoted to the notion that Heaven needs to do more to protect the innocent. But he fully intends to start a war between heaven and hell to do this and plots to sacrifice an entire town. Now, Curst isn't necessarily a group of innocent people, being a place for traitors, remorseful or not. Trias is a fully on extremist willing to do a lot to prevent what he believes is worse bloodshed.
Like many in the game, he is a being of contradiction and suffering.
Conclusion?
And a big yes to the Betrayer. Other potentials include Ravel the Night Hag and even the Transcendant One, the Big Bad of the game itself.
Not the Eye
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Trias
To Hazama
Shadow Ranger
First Magnificent Bastard EP in mind.
What is the work?
Shimeji Simulation is a 2019 manga created by Tsukumizu, the creator of the Cult Classic hitpiece Girls' Last Tour. It centres on Shijima Tsukishima, a middle school dropout who later comes out of hiding after two years, causing her to have a mushroom on top of her head. As she starts her first year, she later befriends the cheerful Majime Yamashita, who has an egg on top of her head. However, as soon as the story goes further, the world they are in is not what it seems on the outside and there is more to it.
The Candidate?
Big Sis, first name unknown, is the Aloof Dark-Haired Girl older sister of Shijima Tsukishima, who is a genius inventor. She and her sister Shijima don't have parents, who were both orphaned during their childhood. Big Sis was revealed to be a pariah during her elementary and high school years due to conflicting interests amongst her peers. In the present time she is a university student, who is the inventor of the Raw Fish Generator, a machine used to produce the Fish With Names, which was firstly seen during Shijima's dream, and it also allows her to send someone to their own dreams.
In order to test the machine's capability of sending a person within it, Big Sis gave two sleeping pills to her younger sister before activating the machine, sending her to her own dream, before finally succeeding at her goal. For three days she created a giant excavator with the help of the Hole-Digging Club members, where it later played a role in digging a giant, endless hole that soon led to the Gardener's world underneath.
With Shijima and Majime's help, Big Sis comes across odd rocks known as "Dreamstones," adding that she has been looking into their sudden presence for an unknown period of time. Big Sis subsequently takes Majime and her younger sister into a Dreamstone after realizing that explanation won't be sufficient. Before Shijima discovers that this is the same dream she had, they are subsequently transferred into what appears to be a dream world, which Big Sis refers to as a "Dreamscape." Later, Big Sis discloses to Majime, her younger sister, that the Dreamscape's strange rock that is in front of them is the same rock that arrived the day after Shijima's dream ended.
Before showing them the current Dreamscape, Big Sis describes the Dreamscape that they have to both her younger sister and Majime. The basis in the Dreamscape, she continues, is the dream she customized for herself in order to make it simpler to produce. The key distinction between a dream and reality, according to Shijima's sister, is whether or not somebody chooses to share it with others. Shijima's sister then speculates that the dream they are in is approaching reality before Majime continues by saying that they are both experiencing the same dream that they are. Later, as the two go through, Shijima's sister demonstrates the following to them, including a Fizeau apparatus.
Shijima's sister then discusses her achievement from their experiment in the Danchi the day before, when she was able to link and realize their own visions, as they go into the final contraption. Shijima's sister falls asleep all of a sudden, but not before being abruptly woken by something else, forcing Shijima, Majime, and her to leave the Dreamscape since she believes that the reality they are now in is the one they are currently witnessing. Shijima's sister then says that she first assumed that their town had paranormal phenomena like a force field and a power that materializes residents' ideas.
The village they are in, West Yomogi, was actually someone's fantasy all along, and Big Sis also admits that she was aware of the peculiar patterns the community's rules had created. Then Shijima's sister says that the entire town is only a "calculation," presumably implying that the town was just ever an illusion. To the surprise of Majime and Shijima, Big Sis is nonetheless cut off by an approaching enormous truck as it hits near her, revealing to be the perpetrator: The Gardener.
Big Sis then engages the latter in a lengthy battle with the Gardener before disclosing that there haven't been any traffic accidents in West Yomogi in the previous year or the years before it. She continues by saying that no one has ever died in an accident in their planet. The Gardener is then informed by Shijima's sister that she is only able to change the town's impact as well as people's moods. Later, Shijima's sister goes to the Gardener to explain to him that the sea-urchin device she made was actually a spying and interference tool for the residents of West Yomogi, and she also reveals that she destroyed it because it was used in her own experiments.
Big Sis later claims that she is a "damper" who is simply negating the stability and change within the town and that she cannot handle those things that are above her level before revealing that West Yomogi is just a "calculation" that is empty and that everything outside of it is just "papier-mache." Before the Fish With Names suddenly emerges all around them, Big Sis tells the Gardener what her intentions are after all this time: she wants to use the mysterious device she created, a conch-shaped device that produces the Fish With Names, to change the very basis of her own universe. Big Sis plans about "giving" everyone "Extra Freedom" after they fight once more.
Big Sis then suddenly informs Shijima that once her current plans are successful, everyone would know about Big Sis' motivations. The Gardener's attempts to stop her are then mocked by Big Sis, who claims that neither a God nor even the town's architects can stop her. Then she goes on to explain to the others that West Yomogi is vanishing, that it is said to be human nature to crave more freedom, and that ever since, potential and creativity have been developed, but nonetheless caused a massive change to the town and the world for good, as well as giving humanity the powers of Reality Warping permanently.
Big Sis later returns, who is seen with Yomikawa in the Rock World developing a new algorithm based on the machine code that would increase the simulation's computational powers. But unbeknownst to her another partial clone of her was created in the process, with an ulterior motive of her own: to change oneself by using the future school festival as means.
But that doesn't go unnoticed when Big Sis later discovers the clone posing as the real Big Sis, triggering yet another battle, while warning that the clone's presence only spells a major disaster far worse than what she did in her previous confrontation with the Gardener. She claims that the clone now has plans to destroy the world for good through the Key, a power that allows humans to change themselves under their own whim, including modification, replication/cloning and deletion in an instant. Big Sis then warns that she will proceed to use the Key and uncover its true purpose for everyone, knowing that such feedback loops will exist in the first place. Big Sis then gives Shijima and Majime the opportunity to stop her clone's world-changing motivations by halting the Mosasa Dogs' performance, which was now used as a broadcast signal to transmit the Key easily and blend it within the world's coding, where this time another permanent change to the already messed-up world has ensued.
It is later revealed in Chapter 45 that Big Sis, in the form of a fish, is slowly dying, remorsefully telling Shijima that she was atoning for what she did. She then tells Shijima one thing before her passing: to go back in time during the School Festival to reverse the damage her clone had caused in the past but at one cost: she has to keep her distance from anyone she knows forever.
How is she Magnificent?
Big Sis is the Aloof Dark-Haired Girl scientist and Shijima's big sister, who has been masterminding the alteration of West Yomogi behind the scenes and uncover it for what it truly is, without even the Gardener noticing up until Chapter 30.
She was able to invent various technologies like the Raw Fish Generator, which she used it to send her younger sister into the Dreamscape, unlocking the ability to enter someone's dreams which would become pivotal during the climatic battle between her and Big Sis.
Her magnificence is shown when she was able to create a sea urchin device, which allowed her to read other's thoughts, as well as disrupting the simulation's stringent natural order that the Gardener imposed which shows the true nature of their own world: a simulated reality. She was unfazed by the Gardener's cold threats during their battle, maintaining a calm and collected expression throughout the said moment. She tells the Gardener that everything about her reality is nothing more than "papier-mache" and "no mere Gardeners" can stop her, before using the Fish With Names to dismantle and alter West Yomogi, thereby permanently altering the town and the world itself by giving humanity the ability to alter reality to themselves without imposed restrictions.
During the school festival, Big Sis restrains her rogue clone, which gives Shijima and Majime the time to stop the Key from blending into the code, where it was being broadcasted by the Mosasa Dogs. Albeit it was too late as the code was successfully transmitted across the simulation, Sis' final plans before her passing would soon come to fruition when she tells her younger sister during Chapter 45 to reverse the damage that her clone had caused in the first place by going back through time, despite the major setback of Shijima distancing herself from others, so that things would be returned back to normal.
How is she a Bastard? How is she not too bad?
Big Sis is not without her bastard moments. She is often seen as the aloof counterpart to Shijima, only showing some care for her as she spent most of her times focusing on her experiments and her inventions, all for the purpose of achieving her goal of uncovering the true layers of West Yomogi. Her motivations of uncovering and altering West Yomogi, while somewhat altruistic as she wanted to allow humanity to become unrestrained to the Gardener's restrictions, is not without the damage it causes to the world as a whole, allowing the likes of her own rogue clone to use it as means to hand out the Key to humanity through the school festival concert, which would unlock them the ability to change themselves, causing an irreversible feedback loop in the first place.
However, Big Sis is not a monster by all means. She's a textbook Anti-Villain, for sure, but she is not a truly evil person. She is mostly a misguided person with a tragic past stemmed from years of being bullied by her peers for being different, as well as being orphaned like her sister. And her motivations of altering West Yomogi is not out of maliciousness but rather she wanted humanity to express unrestricted freedom for themselves, away from the machinations of the Gardener's restrictions she imposed to her own world. And in her death, who is now a fish, Big Sis atoned for the actions she caused in her own world, namely the alteration of West Yomogi and her clone's attempt of giving humanity the ability to change themselves, at the expense of causing more feedback loops, telling Shijima in her final moments to go back in time during the school festival and reverse her clone's damage.
Final verdict?
Leaning yes , but I'll leave you to vote for this EP.
Abstain on Big Sis. She doesn't sound enough of a bitch to me, more like an Anti-Hero - but maybe I've missed something.
(Abstaining on Trias too, but that's because I don't feel comfortable voting for angel characters, I'm sorry).
I have another Akunin candidate, Achimas Welde from The Death of Achilles (and he also makes a small but plot-relevant appearance in The Winter Queen before that).
The Work
The Death of Achilles is the fourth novel in the Erast Fandorin series. Right after Erast Fandorin, with Masa in tow, returns from Japan, the Living Legend general Mikhail Sobolev mysteriously dies. Overall, the death of heart failure looks natural if sudden, but Fandorin persuades his superiors to start an investigation.The Character
Achimas Welde is a Professional Killer behind the general's death. In The Winter Queen, he is also the one who killed Achtyrtsev and later sent the bomb that killed Fandorin's young wife.When he is a boy, his parents are both killed in a robber raid. Achimas manages to flee, then has another near escape after his attempts to survive by stealing almost land him in prison, and finally he disguises himself as a girl and finds refuge in a convent orphanage. He makes a friend there, Zhenya, who helps him maintain his cover.
Then his maternal uncle Hassan finds and adopts him. He teaches him to use weaponry to prepare to avenge his parents. Achimas is very happy with the idea, though he disagrees with his uncle on one point: Hassan says that you need to feel red-hot rage to be really strong, but Achimas is against that, always learning to keep his emotions in check.
Rather than, as Hassan suggests, shoot Magoma, the leader of the robbers who raided his village, Achimas steals a packet of Cyanide Pill poison from Hassan, disguises himself as a servant girl, poisons Magoma's robbers and slits Magoma's throat.
Later, Hassan pays for him to attend school. There, Achimas is usually an average student, feeling that he doesn't really need all that academia. At one point, he kills a vicious bully who was playing the student body against Achimas for the latter's pale "Finnish" look; later, he also kills one of the teachers who turns on Achimas after the latter sees him in a brothel.
Three years go on like that, then Hassan retires from actively illegal stuff and only requires Achimas's help occasionally. They decide to rob wealthy (and shady) businessman Lazar Medvedev; Achimas manages (by pretending to offer a partnership) to get the latter to show him where the money's kept. The plan becomes easier when Lazar's wife turns out to be Zhenya, who has retained her childhood crush on Achimas. However, Lazar outwits them; in the ensuing fight Hassan and Zhenya are killed. Achimas kills Lazar and his goons.
After that, he works solo as a Professional Killer. Extremely patient and composed, he is highly successful; in his free time, he plays the roulette (not for the thrill of it: he likes the feel of conquering the numbers - and with his patience, he usually eventually wins back all the losses) and spends time with high-class call girls (he lives with each one for a month, two at most).
With his assignments, now that the personal revenge is all done, it's always Nothing Personal. He has a fatalistic approach to life and death and knows he can also get killed, though of course he is careful to prevent that.
Achimas goes to a graduation of law students and picks Etienne Licole, an earnest, eager new graduate. He offers him to take the Fechtel case; Licole tries to refuse, but Achimas insists he has proofs that cast doubt on Fechtel's guilt, and adds that Licole should rather accept this case and win publicity than work like a slave for other lawyers for thirty years before starting a firm of his own.
Etienne Licole deals with lots of hatred for agreeing to defend Fechtel at all; threatening messages are left on the walls of his house. In his speech for the defense, he points out that there is no conclusive evidence against Fechtel, but there is some at least equally compelling circumstantial evidence against his gardener, who coincidentally has fled with no trace (in truth, Achimas has killed him).
The court is adjourned until the next day, but at night, Licole's house is burned down (Achimas, who liked the young man, killed him in his sleep before starting the fire). Licole's speech is now praised for its comprehensiveness and impartiality, the gardener is treated like a shadowy figure, and the tragedy of a young lawyer lynched mere days after graduation turns the mob's mood into a different direction. With 7 people in the jury voting him innocent, Fechtel is acquitted.
It turns out he is hired by the government (the Tsar's brother himself, as he later finds out). Sobolev is planning a coup, so he must be removed, but: 1) the death must look natural 2) the death must be shameful in his inner circle's eyes 3) the public must not be aware of the shamefulness, since it's better to keep the general a hero in their eyes.
Pretending to be Sobolev's compatriot planning a surprise for the general, Achimas arranges for High-Class Call Girl Wanda Tolle to seduce him. He poisons Sobolev with a substance that becomes lethal when the heartbeat speeds up. It all works like a charm: Sobolev dies in Wanda's bed, but his aides-de-camp carry his body back to the hotel, so the public learns nothing.
The million rubles that Sobolev was carrying around in preparation for his coup and that Achimas was supposed to take as payment is stolen.
Achimas intends to kill Wanda, but realizes he has fallen in love with her. By coincidence, a German spy has also asked Wanda to poison Sobolev, but she refused point-blank, so Achimas, when he finds it out, decides to steer the investigation towards the German intelligence. He kills the spy, making it look like the German superiors have removed their overly zealous worker.
He also manages to figure out and track down the crime boss responsible for the theft of his million rubles; said crime boss gets into a fight with Fandorin and is wounded, and Achimas finishes him off. He has also learned that the crime boss has been acting under the protection of one of the government officials who hoped to pocket the money by himself. Achimas kills him and takes the money.
He writes to the office of the Tsar's brother about the dishonest official and about the troubles that Fandorin caused him. For investigating without a sanction, Fandorin is put under house arrest but doesn't obey the orders, managing to track down Achimas by impersonating him in a phone call to Wanda.
They have a duel, where Fandorin is only able to escape when Achimas half-closes his eyes in relief when he learns Wanda didn't give him away intentionally. Masa, it turns out, has followed Fandorin and comes to his defense, and together they manage to mortally wound Achimas.
When Achimas lies dying, he tells Fandorin he will save his life in exchange for a favor. He says that the government will have Fandorin killed if he doesn't escape, and says he has two tickets for a Paris train among his things (he had been planning to leave with Wanda). In exchange for that, he asks Fandorin to send fifty thousand rubles (part of Achimas's fee) to Wanda: it's the exact sum she needs to start a new life.
Achimas dies calmly, feeling it has been a good life overall.
(As it turns out, the government, after Achimas's death, isn't throwing Fandorin under the bus: the police's failure to show up for Achimas's arrest is blamed solely on the police chief, and Fandorin is rewarded and praised. But Wanda does get her fifty thousand).
Is he magnificent?
He is brilliant to the point of being Fandorin's Foil (it's the only book in the series - at least, among those that I've read by now - where half of the book is a Perspective Flip through the antagonist's eyes). Despite being a Professional Killer, he has rigid standards of his own, and when he has to kill people for He Knows Too Much, he feels sorry about it.He maintains a realistic view of his abilities: when he searches for the crime boss in the criminal district of Khitrovka, he understands that he can't pose as a local without knowing the Thieves' Cant and everything else from the local culture. He also is understandably unwilling to tackle Fandorin in a one-to-one fight, but when he does, he treats him as a Worthy Opponent.
Is he a bastard?
Well, he is an unrepentant and cynical Professional Killer.I'm in doubt he might be too much of a bastard not by himself, but due getting to sadistic Serial Killer Fechtel acquitted.
Conclusion?
If it hasn't been for the Fechtel & Etienne Licole story, I would have been utterly certain he fits.Edited by AutumnLeaves on Aug 17th 2023 at 11:07:55 AM
Ultimate Moral Compass
Trias
I hate spoilers
to Hazama. I feel like this trope doesn't lend itself well to Fighting Games in general.
Also, here's the long overdue write-up of ShadowMan.EXE and his Operator. This brings Mega Man to 7 characters.
Dark Miyabi/Dusk and ShadowMan.EXE are seasoned mercenaries who serve the highest bidder. First seen having been recruited by the NetMafia Gospel, Miyabi uses ShadowMan to delete all of the NetNavis in the Yumland area. Later taking part in a siege against SciLab's Mother Computer, ShadowMan uses his underlings to protect himself from the Ultimate Blaster that was supposed to delete him, having to go down in a fair fight. Later being recruited into Team Colonel, Dusk decides to test Lan and MegaMan through a series of challenges to see if they're worthy of him. Their experience is vital to overthrowing the villainous group Nebula. Dusk is eventually revealed to have mentored Dark Scyth in deleting Navis, molding him into a competent Operator.
Edited by 227someguy on Aug 17th 2023 at 3:27:48 PM
Everyone look at my sandbox
Trias, Welde, and Shijima
To Hazama
RIP Toriyama
Sure to Trias and Welde, still reading Big Sis
- Heist (2015):
- Luke Vaughn is a retired criminal who decides to pull off one final heist to pay for the surgery his sickly daughter needs. Teaming up with the bloodthirsty Cox, Vaughn lays out a plan to rob the impregnable Swan casino, successfully evading guards and bypassing the locks. Though exposed, Vaughn planned for such an occasion and takes a bus of passengers hostage, using the bus to keep ahead of pursuing police. Vaughn makes a hostage exchange of a supposedly pregnant woman—actually Vaughn's sister, who he slips the stolen casino money to hide in her fake pregnant belly—to show good faith with the cops, and later murders Cox to prevent him from harming an innocent passenger. Despite his criminal actions, Vaughn's kindness spurs the very people he took hostage to help him escape the police, and though he is then cornered by the Swan's owner, Pope, Vaughn reveals to him that the entire bus-hijacking was planned from the start and that his daughter's surgery has already been paid for by his sister with Pope's stolen money.
- Francis "the Pope" Silva is an aged crime boss who has set up a cushy job for himself as the owner of the Swan casino, that doubles as a money laundering outfit for every major crime family in the city. The Pope has designed the Swan to be imprenetrable, and ruthlessly tracks down and kills anyone who cheats him out of even a small amount of money, simply on principle. When Luke Vaughn leads a heist on the Swan, Pope dispatches his right-hand man Dog to track Vaughn down, eventually cornering Vaughn. Though initially prepared to kill Vaughn, Pope is impressed at Vaughn's scheme and his motive to save his sickly daughter, and so Pope executes the vicious Dog for threatening Vaughn's family, then helps Vaughn escape so he can reunite with his daughter.
Edited by Ravok on Aug 17th 2023 at 4:43:51 AM
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Goku Black
trias and welde.
I'll do my eo next page. To let people vote on this bunch
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Right finally let's get these out the way.
- Madagascar
- The Penguins—Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private—are a quartet who balance ingenuity with Comedic Sociopathy. During the first film, aiming to return to Antarctica, the Penguins escape their zoo confinement and take over the ship freighter to help them navigate to Antarctica. Disappointed with the outcome, the Penguins head to Madagascar and aid with the saving of Marty from the feral Fossa. After their plane crashes along with the heroes in Africa, the Penguins devise a scheme to build a more adept and reinforced one— robbing several tourist groups of their vehicles through ploys, leaving them stranded. Aiding the heroes with rescuing Alex from the humans, the Penguins then have the new plane ram the dam they had created, stopping the water shortage within the animal's reserve. Heading to Monte Carlo and gathering a huge amount of spoils, The Penguins aid the heroes to escape the villainous Captain DuBois. During the film's climax, the Penguins initiate "Operation Afro Circus" to save the heroes from DuBois, resulting in her and her cronies being defeated and shipped off to Madagascar. After casually infiltrating Fort Knox for Private's birthday, the Penguins end up against a scheme by the mastermind Dave who's out to rid the world of penguins—with them ending triumphant. With an incredible amount of loyalty to each other but a comedically callous regard for everyone else, the Penguins are the ultimate Wild Card of the series.
- Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: Nana is a seemingly innocuous old lady who loses her unpleasant demeanour from her previous appearances but proves herself to be one of the toughest characters within the series. After the Penguins rob her tourist group's jeep, Nana heads into the woods to avoid being eaten by animals where she meets other stranded groups. Rallying the humans to become survivors, Nana has them be able to create an inhabitable land for them—building a dam to conserve water and having the villagers hunt animals for food. When the humans capture Alex, Nana almost has him cooked to be eaten, commending the other survivors for the capture. After attempting to shoot both Alex and Zuba after their performance—noting it to be beautiful—Nana stares down the plane as it comes to crash into the dam with no fear. Surviving the hit and noticing Makunga holding her handbag, Nana beats the Smug Snake and leaves the film dragging him by the ear.
Right I always find it harder to write Mb entries than CM and these have been a long time coming so feedback would be appreciated folks.
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
Mir we are allowed to have 4 EPs per page, but whatever you feel is best.
Trias.
Shadow Ranger
And a second MB Effortpost, where now it is time for the Big Bad of Shimeji Simulation, the Big Sis Clone.
What is the Work?
Shimeji Simulation is a 2019 manga created by Tsukumizu, the creator of the Cult Classic hitpiece Girls' Last Tour. It centres on Shijima Tsukishima, a middle school dropout who later comes out of hiding after two years, causing her to have a mushroom on top of her head. As she starts her first year, she later befriends the cheerful Majime Yamashita, who has an egg on top of her head. However, as soon as the story goes further, the world they are in is not what it seems on the outside and there is more to it.
Who is she?
The Big Sis Clone is the rogue clone of Big Sis, her namesake, who was created after Big Sis accidentally uncovers the boundaries of humanity in the Rock World. In later chapters, the sis clone later shows up during the school festival in West Yomogi High School, firstly meeting the Mosasa Dogs who were seen practicing their piece for the school festival. While Ayaka was practicing her piano and with her feeling that the music is becoming like her, the Sis clone nonchalantly reveals that she can become music in the first place, foreshadowing her true nature as a reality warper.
During Shijima, the Gardener and Majime's visit to an exhibition of what appeared to be displays of West Yomogi before Sis' alteration, the Sis clone shows up besides Shijima and claims that what happened in the past West Yomogi is simply building up for what it will happen in the future, before the real Big Sis immediately appears and attacks the clone, ensuing another battle, with Sis warning the duo that her clone can cause a disaster in the first place if she is not stopped.
Big Sis warns how her rogue clone would cause destruction to the utopia she created in the first place, where everyone would disappear and with the clone destroying it all. After Big Sis reveals that she unlocked the Key, the power that allowed humanity to change themselves in an instant including modification, replication and deletion, in her attempts to bolster the simulation's computational power, Big Sis now reveals what the clone has been wanting to: using the school festival as means to uncover the Key and spread all over it by manipulating the Mosasa Dogs through their music which would perfectly blend with the simulation's coding, while also starting a feedback loop.
The Sis clone then looks at her prime, nonchalantly claiming that the Mosasa Dogs' performance is considered as a "resonance effect", which is used to "unlock" people who happen to hear the performance. The clone continues further into her plans, stating that the school festival is one such opportunity to do so, due to the large crowd volume, making it easy for the Key to be spread across the entire world. Despite being defeated by her prime, the Sis clone manages to successfully spread the Key to all of the world's residents, thereby making her goal of unlocking humanity the ability to change themselves successfully successfully in the first place.
How is she Magnificent?
The Big Sis Clone is essentially the independent, rogue clone of Big Sis, created as a byproduct of her prime's accidental attempts to unlock the boundaries of humanity. This soon takes the form of the Key, the power that allows humans to change themselves, which becomes an essential MacGuffin in Chapters 38 to 40 of the manga. She manipulates the Mosasa Dogs, who were practicing their piece for the school festival, by cleverly stating that they can become music, which soon eventually shows her true nature as a Reality Warper.
What makes her magnificent in the first place is how she is able to use the Mosasa Dogs and their concert as a broadcast signal, whom she claims that their performance is a "resonance effect" through the crowd who hears it, so that this newfound ability of the Key will be spread across the audiences of their performance, as well as it blending across the world's coding and simulation within the festival crowd and the people of the simulation. Even after she and her other clones were restrained by her prime, her own plans ultimately paid off at the end when humanity now have the powers of the Key, granting them the power to change themselves as well as more unrestricted freedom.
Is she too much of a bastard?
The Sis Clone's plans of granting humanity the Key, while shown to be as means to allow humanity to remove the remaining barriers and restrictions of the simulation, has caused an irreversible feedback loop in the first place, where her actions against the already-twisted simulation left a lasting, damaging impact in the first place. She claims to her prime that what she does ultimately benefits for the utopia that Big Sis created in the first place, after it was altered by her, with Sis citing that her clone's actions would fall into chaos in the long run, which became true at the end as West Yomogi and the world within it became an unrecognisable world, so much that Big Sis even warns her younger sister that going back in time is the only way to go.
That being said, like her prime's goals of removing the restrictions of the simulation by giving humanity the ability to change reality to their specifications, the Big Sis clone is an extremist who also shares her prime's motivations of removing restrictions from humanity, with it being focused on giving them the ability to change oneself, allowing them more unrestrained freedom.
Verdict
Leaning a tentative yes , but you can put your vote.
Edited by holygrail24 on Aug 17th 2023 at 8:23:22 AM
The Metro series fan! Steam Account: Randum
Yes to Qually, Hawk Moth, Superfly, Trias and Welde.
Abstain on Big Sis.
No to Hazama.
I have an interesting question about a work that seems to be in limbo.
A couple of months ago, I listened to a podcast called Veronica. Features some big-name voice actors like Jim Cummings, Mark Meer, Tara Sands and Veronica Taylor, it's about a vampire named Veronica Fisher, who looks like she is in her 20s but is actually 77 years old. She is also a sex worker who secretly drains blood from her customers, usually without killing them, but if one of turns out to be a rapist or an abuser, she will kill them. She is the caretaker of a ghost child named Rachael, who is seemingly kidnapped one day.
I have doubts about Veronica keeping, she agrees to do something really gross and sexually demeaning to get info to find Rachael in the last episode, but I wouldn't hold that against her, but she does have a habit of having other people do the major detective work for her, so I would doc points for that.
She has another ghost named Lucy who helps her. But the most likely keeper is a former cop named Frank who is Veronica's assistant, he hides bodies for her and is her main detective. Unfortunately, the first season was released a year ago, ends on a cliffhanger (Rachael is not rescued) and I don't know when season 2 would be released, if ever. I am not sure how to handle this series.
moved
Edited by Lightysnake on Aug 18th 2023 at 7:28:51 AM
How comedic is Shimeji Simulation? I know something like Simpsons can have MBs (just not CMs) so I'm still voting a yes, just curious if it's on that level.
Shadow Ranger
It's comedic in some areas in early chapters, but a Cerebus Syndrome moment happens in Chapter 30, where the manga pretty much slowly shows its true nature as a deconstruction of existential crisis and the limitations of playing against humanity in a slice-of-life setting, especially in later chapters after Chapter 38. Yes, it's still somewhat comedic after 40, but it happens much less than what it was pre-Chapter 30.
Also, for Sarah.
Edited by holygrail24 on Aug 18th 2023 at 5:16:05 AM
The Metro series fan! Steam Account: Randum
To Sarah and the clone
@ Lightysnake My post just made a new page should you want to post Sarah there
Edited by G-Editor on Aug 18th 2023 at 10:06:24 AM
Classy, Refined, Unstable
Clone, Sarah
Not the Eye
to Welde and Clone. I would happily vote on Sarah, but with her there are now 5 EP’s on the page.
Goku Black
clone.
Could Sarah's ep he moved to the next page. This will help.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
I'm gonna wait for Riley to respond to Ice's response before making my vote.
Edited by jjjj2 on Aug 17th 2023 at 10:38:44 AM
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