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
I still think his Graceful Loser ending overshadows any other issues, but meh. You win some, you lose some.
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Also, I already pointed out in the EP that Jr. takes plenty of countermeasures after tricking the Pianatas and manages to outsmart Mario himself, so I don’t think that’s even an issue.
Edited by Remnant43 on Nov 24th 2023 at 1:55:43 PM
Skyward bound and adrift in timeYes to Lucci
What’s the work?
Speed Racer is the 2008 adaptation of the manga of the same name, probably best known for its insanely bright colors and ridiculous action scenes (also a LOT of wipe cuts). It follows Speed Racer, an up and coming racecar driver who’s approached by billionaire automotive mogul Arnold Royalton to race for his company in the World Racing League (WRL). When Speed refuses, Royalton fixes the next race Speed is in to destroy his car, then sues the Racer family in order to destroy them financially.
Who is Taejo Togokhan and what does he do?
Taejo is the son of Tetsuo Togokhan, an automotive company Royalton is looking to buy out soon. For a while Taejo has been under the thumb of Cruncher Block, a gangster Royalton uses to fix races in his favor, and after crashing in the same race Speed did, Taejo comes up with a plan to help both of them. Taejo approaches Inspector Detector and Racer X, law enforcement who have been trying to expose Royalton and Block, and offers to give them a file that could connect the two if X and Speed help him win the Casa Crisco, a dangerous cross country race, so the stock of Togokhan Motors goes up enough to stop Royalton’s buyout (also the winner will be allowed to race in the WRL Grand Prix).
Royalton and Block figure out what Taejo is planning and pay some of the other drivers to take him out of the race but Speed and X are able to protect him (though they still lose the first of the two parts of the race). The night before the second half of the race, ninjas hired by Block attack Speed, and X and poison Taejo with a drug that leaves him too tired to race. Taejo lets Speed’s girlfriend Trixie race in his place while he disguises himself as his sister Horuko to keep anyone from knowing about Trixie. When Block tries to hijack his helicopter and kidnap him (thinking he’s Horuko) Taejo catches him off guard and captures him. After fighting off Block’s gang with the Racer family Taejo rejoins the race and Speed is able to lead them to victory.
It’s here that Taejo’s true intentions are revealed, he was actually just using Speed and X to drive the stock of Togokhan Motors up so Royalton would be forced to buy it at a much higher price and he ditches the group without giving them the file. Horuko, pissed at Taejo’s deception, decides to give Speed Taejo’s pass to drive in the Grand Prix so he can get the money to save his family business. When Speed shows up, Taejo quickly realizes what Horuko did and his impressed and he ends up cheering Speed on as he exposes Royalton’s use of illegal weapons in his cars and wins the Grand Prix, with the epilogue showing that he decided to testify against Royalton and helped put him away.
Is he magnificent?
He managed to play the Racers and X for chumps in order to help his family and managed to get the drop on Block and have him arrested in the process and even pulled a Heel–Face Turn in the end and helped take down Royalton. Now he does have a temper and is a bit overconfident, shown when he almost attacks Speed after they lost the first half of the Casa Cristo and when he insists on racing despite being poisoned (only backing down because he can’t even stand) however while he does have an arrogant streak a private conversation with Horuko shows that his determination to win isn’t because of his ego, but because he’s dedicated to helping his father and sees the race as the only way to do so.
Is he a bastard?
He isn’t super bad but he did trick Speed and X into participating in a really dangerous race, which is stated to have killed several people in the past, under false pretenses and then left the Racers to be ruined by Royalton.
Conclusion?
I think he keeps.
While Bowser Jr.'s initial frame-up relied on the Piantas being idiots, he still got one over on Mario several times. And I think his tantrums are brief enough and his grace and lack of fear at his ultimate defeat did enough to redeem his moments of frustration.
Taejo
Edited by WilyGryphon on Nov 24th 2023 at 2:19:10 PM
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Thanks! And
to Lucci.
I’d say it depends on whether the LMD in question is given enough time to shine and show how convincing and/or devious they are, similar to the Terminators. I haven’t seen Agents of SHIELD in a long time, though, so I don’t know if there are any qualifiers.
Edited by Remnant43 on Nov 24th 2023 at 4:08:17 AM
Skyward bound and adrift in timeYes to Lucci and Taejo. Final word on Bowser Junior? As stated,his plan relies on the Piantas being idiots. When you're fooling someone who's never seen the actual Mario before, that's not really an impressive feat. And yeah the tantrums are just the icing on the cake. It'd be one thing if he did them every now and then but he literally does them every single time you stop him. I thought he only did them once or twice but no. And as I've stated before Junior doesn't really do much beyond what Dood said that is that clever nor does he fool anyone that isn't a Pianta. Even Peach isn't fooled.
Edited by Klavice on Nov 24th 2023 at 1:09:26 AM
Peach is fooled the first couple times, but she also grabs the Idiot Ball hard in this game, so that’s nothing impressive.
Well, we do have MB versions of Magneto and General Zod, so...
So, I am going to request the swaps tomorrow but since I am still somewhat recovering from my surgery and a cold it will probably be the afternoon. I just wanted to let you guys know so you don't wonder why it is not first thing in the morning.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup threadAlright so... I have a few candidates from a certain work I'd like to propose. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little on the anxious side with these ones since they're regarding a work that not a lot of people like, so this proposal is more gonna be used as a testing ground that, if everything goes smoothly, I'll be more confident in proposing more candidates. The only thing I really ask is to try and put your biases aside for this, however I won't be offended or annoyed if you aren't comfortable with voting on this one. Just thought I'd make that clear before getting into this.
What is the Work?
The Dream SMP is a Minecraft roleplay server that was created by the ever infamous content creator Dream. Starting off as a simple survival Minecraft server created for Dream and his friends to have fun on, as the server began to progress and more players were added, it soon became its own overarching narrative with multiple plot beats and characters, with one of those being the candidate I will be discussing today.
Who is Technoblade? What has he done?
Technoblade (Rest in Peace) served as a major antagonist of this server. A skilled fighter with a fierce opposition to the government, he joined the Dream SMP under the idea that he would be able to bring down L'Manberg if he joined forces with Pogtopia. Upon finding out that they had actually planned to take back the country and restablish the Goverment, Technoblade turned his back on them, betraying them and laying waste to L'Manberg before going into hiding. Upon being discovered by the vengeful Quackity and his team and being forced to surrender under the threat of his pet horse Karl being killed, he managed to escape death thanks to a Totem of Undying he had been given by Dream previously before killing Quackity who had attempted to persue him. Now angry at L'Manberg for attempting to take his life as well as threatening those he cared about, he proceeded to initiate Project Doomsday where, using countless withers that he had prepared for an occasion such as this, would lay waste to the country, reducing it to a crator that was beyond repair, something that he actually managed to succeed in. After all was said and done and L'Manberg was officially buried, Technoblade would go back to doing his own thing, establishing the Syndicate in order to make sure that no forms of government could ever rise to power again.
Is He Magnificent?
While not necessarily the most manipulative character in this series. Techno for sure makes up for that thanks to his vast variety of skills and utilities, always being crazy prepared when it comes to his plans and his quick thinking. With some of his most impressive shows being when he managed to narrowly escape death when he was being executed by L'Manberg. As well as being able to break Dream out of a high security prison. As a matter of fact, Techno is one of the very few characters who manages to succeed in pretty much all of his plans, and whenever it seems like his deathday is due, he manages to escape it every single time.
Now in terms of charm? Techno had no problems in that department either, he's without a doubt one of the most entertaining characters in this series thanks to his dry humor, quips, and insane fighting ability, it's no surprise that he quickly became a fan favorite amongst the community upon his introduction.
Now you could argue that Techno might have a few humiliating moments here and there, but most of them are OOC scenes that don't really apply to the main story itself, so I think it's fine.
Is He a Bastard?
Most definitely. Even if it is for an understandable cause, Techno had no issues with bombling L'Manberg to the ground, twice, in incredibly destructive and violent ways that would've no doubt, put many lives in danger, some of which keep in mind, had hardly anything to do with his cause. Looking beyond that though, Techno also have a few other noticeable baddie acts, such as when he executed Tubbo in front of an entire audience under Schlatt's request before attacking said audience, as well as breaking Dream, one of the nastiest baddies in the entire server, out of prison, oh and he was also seemingly fully willing to hand Tommy (AKA a previous victim of Dream) over to Dream if it meant to cash in his favor. Safe to say, Techno definitely meets the bastard quota.
Is He Too Much of a Bastard?
Techno is without a doubt, quite a heinous character. With that said, I think the thing that stops him from being too much of a bastard is. 1. A majority of his heinous acts are done with good reason. As he destroyed L'Manberg because he despised government and believed that power corrupts. 2. Techno is far from the worst baddie that this series has to offer. Keep in mind that this work has characters like Dream, who is objectively, so much worse in almost every way to the point where Techno doesn't look that bad by comparison. Now yes, it is true that not necessarily all of his acts are done with good intentions, such as breaking Dream out of prison, or executing Tubbo. However, when it comes to breaking Dream out of Pandora's Vault, he was simply cashing in his side of the favor, as he had helped him escape his execution prior, and when it comes to executing Tubbo, he was under a lot of pressure and it's made clear that he feels pretty bad about it. Even going as far as to team up with him later on to have Sam locked up, as well as apologizing for what he had done back at the Red Fesitival. As for being willing to hand Tommy over to Dream, this again, was mostly so he could cash in his side of the favor, and other than that, he clearly did care a great deal for Tom before he betrayed him, and even afterward said that he hoped he would find what he was looking for.
Outside of that though, Techno does mention wanting to kill orphans and apparently has done so in the past. But all of these are off screen, and even so, are all played for comedy rather than being a serious heinous feat, so I don't really think it counts for anything.
And finally, the last thing I should note about Techno when it comes to the reason I believe he isn't too much of a bastard, is that he has a lot of redeeming qualities. There are many times within the series where he is genuinely heroic and Affable, with him going out of his way to keep people like Phill safe from harm, as well as helping Quackity take down The Eggpire. In general, even if Techno is a villain who pulls off many nasty stunts, he still has many humanizing qualities that make him more understandable and sympathetic.
Any Other Issues?
I suppose you could say the fact that the voices haunt him and tell him to do things could imply some strong issues with whether he is morally there. But he's still able to pull off impressive stunts, and it's not like he's completely lost his mind or anything.
Verdict?
I am leaning yes. Though again, I will not be offended/annoyed if anyone chooses to abstain, as I know this server has quite the reputation, just, please try to be respectful in the replies, thank you!
Edited by Splonk on Nov 24th 2023 at 7:20:23 AM
My mere presence makes everyone's day worse.

Bowser Jr than.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."