Old Magnificent Bastard thread
Welcome to the Magnificent Bastard proposal thread! This is the thread where new Magnificent Bastard examples are vetted, approved, and written up. If you're looking for the general cleanup thread (for cuts, rewrites, expansions, and the like), please go here
Important: Before suggesting any new examples, please read the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List; if you have any questions, the odds are high they are answered there. Additionally, please check here for the earliest date a work can be discussed (usually two weeks from the U.S. release date) and whether the work has already been reserved by another user.
Here is how the process works:
- If you have a candidate to propose, you can simply come right in and propose them! If the character's run is brief, such as a single issue of a comic book, then a simple summary of their actions and any potential mitigating features will be enough; for longer-running candidates, an effortpost (EP) might be helpful for organizing the proposal. An EP is not outright required, but please be mindful that if a post becomes too clunky and unorganized, it can be very hard for other people to follow.
- After the proposal, there will be a 72-hour discussion and voting period, where people may ask questions and vote on the candidate. The number of upvotes must outnumber the downvotes by at least five for the character to be considered "approved".
- Three days after the proposal has been made, if the character has been approved, you may post the writeup (the text to be posted on the trope page itself) on the thread and send it to the drafts page. Your candidate will soon be added to the MB subpage. If the work has a page, you should add your candidate to the relevant YMMV page. Voila! It's that simple!
Outside of this process, we do have a few ground rules:
- To keep the thread moving at a reasonable pace, there are some restrictions on when a proposal can be made. There should only be a maximum of four EPs posted both per page and per hour to ensure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle; additionally, each individual troper should only be proposing or writing up characters from a maximum of three works at a time (from initial proposals to end of their voting period). If your proposal would fall outside of either of these guidelines, we'd like to ask you to please wait until they would fit within; feel free to type them up on an outside document, and then when the time comes, you can just copy, paste, and post!
- No plagiarism of any kind. This is a very serious matter site-wide, as the website could get in actual legal trouble over this; as a result, this can very quickly lead to mod intervention. This can take many different forms:
- Direct plagiarism, i.e. wholesale copying. This is not only the easiest to find, but is also the most likely to warrant quick moderator intervention. To be clear, quoting in some places is perfectly acceptable, but it has to be very clear you're quoting from something else and it cannot be anything longer than a sentence or two - if you're quoting an entire work summary from Wikipedia, no one is going to believe you've actually consumed the work, so even if you cite your source, your candidate will be downvoted anyway.
- Self-plagiarism. Even if you can prove that you wrote the same text in both places, the site itself can't contain any of the duplicated text. If you already wrote something once before, it's not too hard to write it a second time.
- Using another site's work as a template for a proposal. Just because you don't copy and paste something directly doesn't mean it's any harder to detect if you're basing parts or all of your proposal on text someone else wrote. To be clear, this doesn't violate site rules and won't lead to mod intervention, but just like if you directly plagiarize, no one will believe you've consumed the work if you're clearly basing your proposal on something else. This thread largely operates on the honor system, and tweaking someone else's work to pass it off as your own is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
- Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").
- If you are the first person to downvote a candidate, please provide an explanation of why when you do so. We're here for discussions above all, and a hit-and-run downvote doesn't facilitate anything.
- If a work is already reserved by another user, please don't comment on the work or any potential characters worth discussion before the discussion date. We know how exciting it is when a work has a keeper that you're waiting to talk about, but it's not fair to the person who reserved the work who is just as excited to lead the discussion to see the discussion getting spoiled before they get to do it. On the other hand, if the reservation only has one name attached, shoot them a PM - they may be down for a collaboration, which will get you in on the fun as well!
- Please keep the thread on-topic. While discussing the trope is fun and we encourage people to enjoy it, questions like "who's your favorite MB" are off-topic and can lead to thumps. That's the kind of question to take to people's PMs if they're willing. Similarly, while we encourage friendliness and familiarity with other users, posts should always have some kind of thread-relevant purpose; for instance, if you want to wish someone a happy birthday, feel free to, but if it's the only thing in the post, it's off-topic and needs something else alongside it. Again, though, while we strive for a friendly atmosphere, this is not Facebook; life updates are fun, but unless they have some kind of impact on your thread participation, please do not bring it here - we have Yack Fest for that.
- Please refrain from asking anything along the lines of "How Did We Miss This One?" In almost every case, the answer is simply "No one thought about it before". This Is a Wiki where everyone has different interests, and the fact that people missed a particular candidate, even one that seems like a textbook example of a trope or a character who is particularly iconic in pop culture, means absolutely nothing. The question is disruptive, has a simple and consistent answer, and provides nothing to any discussion.
- If you are suspended from other parts of the website, it is still possible to participate!
- For users who are suspended from editing the wiki, you still have full access to this thread. You can propose candidates and write them up with no issues whatsoever; while you will have to ask someone else to post the entry to the relevant pages once it is done, all write-ups are considered thread-approved - as in, done by consensus - and thus doing so does not violate any rules regarding meatpuppeting.
- If you are suspended from the forums, your participation is limited but not impossible. It is still possible for a forum-suspended user to assist in creating the write-up for a character who has already been approved; as previously mentioned, write-ups are inherently considered a consensus-based edit and thus not tied to any one particular user. However, you can not assist in the proposal of a character; as a proposal is based around the forum rather than the wiki, doing so with a forum suspension qualifies as meatpuppeting.
- Please keep all discussions "in-house".
- What other wikis use for MB equivalents is irrelevant here.
- Please be wary of using other wikis, Fandom or otherwise, as sources of information. They are just as fallible as a site like Wikipedia in regards to accuracy because they can be edited by any user, just as this site can.
- Do not attempt to force a communication with an author in an attempt to gather evidence or settle a debate; besides the fact that this is a YMMV trope and thus author intent has variable weight depending on the circumstance, doing so may cross the line into drama exportation, which is prohibited site-wide.
If you would like to use an EP for your candidate, here's the general format. This format does not have to be followed exactly, but these are the main topics that need to be covered:
What is the work?
This is a brief summary of the work you're going to discuss. We don't need a full plot summary here, just however much we need to understand going into the discussion — it can even be as simple as quoting the summary on the work's page.
Who is the candidate and what have they done?
This is essentially the character's biography — who they are, their story, their goals and methodology, and, preferably (though not required), what happens to the candidate at the end. It does not have to include every single thing they ever do — for some characters, we'd be here all day if that was the case — but it should include the highlights of their journey.
How are they Magnificent?
This is the point where you highlight the character's brilliance. How to they convey their intelligence and charm to the audience? What makes them stand out among the crowd? What are their goals and how do they go about accomplishing them? This part welcomes a lot of creative thinking — not everyone has to be a Machiavellian Diabolical Mastermind to be worth considering here! This is also the time to showcase how the character can think on their feet if it's necessary.
How are they a Bastard? How are they not too bad?
What kinds of moral lines is this character willing to cross for the sake of their goal? Are they willing to let innocents die? Start wars? Commit crimes? The character has to show some kind of unscrupulousness in order to count as a "Bastard". Notably, this character does not necessarily have to be the villain, and an Anti-Hero can cross the line if they're immoral enough, but they have to be immoral somehow.
This is also the section where you then state your case for why they're not too bad. Perhaps their good intentions help mitigate their crimes. Perhaps others are shown to be much worse than them. Perhaps they're prone to Pet the Dog moments or are even fighting on behalf of loved ones. Whatever the case, there are certain lines that an MB can't cross, but as long as their villainy is reasonable for their goal, they can be considered.
Final verdict?
This is where you post your final conclusion on the character in question. You can continue elaborating on your reasons or even just say a simple "yes" or "no"; at this point, we've heard everything we need to hear.
And that's everything you need to know. Welcome to the thread!
Edited by Twiddler on Jan 17th 2024 at 5:40:56 AM
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to the Prince
the Prince.
Not the Eye
Yes to Ruth, Zomboss, Fox, Kandinsky, and Prince Stan.
Writeup for film!Graumer.
- Faithful Robot (1965 film): Graumer is a highly intelligent robot who was upgraded by one of his owners to be able to feel emotions. Struggling with having human emotions yet being treated like a lab rat at best, Graumer flees and decides to create a perfect human master for himself to serve for the rest of his life. Using Batman Gambit trickery, he gets employed by Tom Klempner and is an excellent housekeeper and consultant, while simultaneously stealing Klempner's money and possessions for his human-making project, eventually succeeding in creating the Guy. After Klempner refuses to give Graumer up to the police, Graumer opens up to him and tries to persuade him and the Guy to share the house peacefully. However, as Klempner and the Guy start fighting almost immediately, Graumer, disappointed, poisons both of them and sends himself away to a new hiding place, with the clear implication he is not going to give up.
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
to the Prince
Not the Eye
And my next Tottaly Spies keep, I have another one to check for after this, but this is my last sure one, at least for now.
From Series Fauxnale two parter “Totally Dunzo”
Who is Mr. X? What has she done?
Mrs. Lewis is seemingly just Jerry’s old and sweet, but somehow strick about being proper mother. What he dosen’t know is she was reformed world famous spy, who has retired and become mother. However it all changes when Jerry visits for tea, few drops of evil gene with which Jerry experimented in attempt to eliminate it, fall into her cup. Becoming Mr. X she founded world security company using her conections, including to Queen of England, convincing Jarry to sell the WHOOP.
Replacing spies with droids that at first prove pretty effective at catching baddies. With spies retired, droids let chaos run wild across the streets, while they capture spies. Girls however succesfully evade capture and find Jerry and their friends. Mrs. Lewis reveals herself and has them captured by droids. She leaves her droids to crush them while she goes to get rid of remaining WHOOP agents. However when girls took some of Jerry’s test gagets to battle the droids, they took the box with villain gene device. Sam figures out that reason it didn’t work is that battery was weak, luckily they use droid that restrained them and is about to kill them as battery, curing Jerry’s mom and all world’s baddies of evil (until next season that is).
Is she magnificent?
She is cultured and polite mastermind (plus she still acts like sweet old lady when found out, simply one who is evil) who makes great and almost succesfull plan to create The Villian World, only losing because something coudn’t possibly predict. She does return in a next season and tries to be spy again until she proves to be not quite in touch, but since she was under influence of evil tea during her phase as villain, Im pretty fine taking her as separate character during her tenure as Mr. X.
Is she bastard?
After drinking the evil tea, yep. She wants to get rid of all world’s spies and let the villains run wild, plus is ready to kill her own son and when one woman in store into her accidentally bumps into her cart, she answers with raming her cart into her. But it is again all standard cartoon evil with chaos being bunch of crooks stealing everything they want and streets being ruined, woman unharmed by her and just left confused, plus generic kill the heroes (aside from one being her son that is).
Conclusion?
I say keep.
Yes to Prince Also, can you tell me what's the difference between Tv Tropes and Fandom websites? This is a really important question so I ask kindly, because I need to understand it better, cause I'm a noob here
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
to Mr X who works for the government
The difference doesn’t really matter because we don’t care what fandom sites have to say.
Edited by LarryT on Jan 6th 2024 at 6:28:10 AM
In honor of Akira Toriyama
Goku Black
Mr x
Mr. X
Edited by AutumnLeaves on Jan 6th 2024 at 4:47:34 PM
Jogo
The Prince and Mr. X
Guys, I asked for an important answer, stop just seeing me as an empty guy. I’m not even jerk to begin with
Edited by NicMasterTrope on Jan 6th 2024 at 5:29:42 PM
Classy, Refined, Unstable
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And someone replied. That's the only thing that matters between this site and Fandom sites.
Prince, Mr X
Edited by WetFlannels on Jan 6th 2024 at 2:49:09 PM
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me. To show my appreciation, I will help you awaken from your world of clichés.
I don't see the need to make such an assumption about people because you didn't get the exact answer you wanted. We're encouraged to not speak much on other sites and the response you've been given is sufficient.
Yes to the Scissor Seven characters and X.
RIP Toriyama
-
-
-
RIP Toriyama
Yes to X and the Prince!
Tonight I dine on monkey soup.
Yes to X
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
Yes to Stan and Mr. X.
Sorry for being absent. I have a really bad cold.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Lies and Violence!
The Prince of Stern and X.
What's the work?
Set after the first two Terminator films, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles follows John and Sarah Connor as they prepare for the upcoming robot apocalypse as orchestrated by the rogue A.I. Skynet. As Skynet's Terminators hunt John before he can grow up into the leader of the human resistance, the Connors are joined by one of the machines themselves, Cameron, a reprogrammed Terminator sent into the past by Future!John to help them.
I've been meaning to get to this one for a while now.
Who is Cameron?
A Terminator infiltrator sent to assassinate John Connor, Cameron is first chronologically introduced interrogating a resistance fighter, Allison Young, whose appearance she adopts for a human disguise. Though Cameron at first seems to be making headway in getting information from Allison, she quickly deduces that some of what she's given up were falsehoods intended to get her killed when she tries to infiltrate the resistance. She proceeds to execute Allison and adjusts her plans appropriately, but she's nonetheless somehow caught offscreen.
Instead of destroying her, however, John reprograms Cameron to serve as his loyal right-hand. She's eventually sent to the past to protect young!John and Sarah from the Terminator Cromartie, posing as a student at John's new school to protect him from the inevitable attack. Cromartie proves to be pretty persistent, but Cameron has a backup plan: she orchestrates a hostage crisis at a bank so she can get into the building's vaults, which, on top of providing some defense, also store a bunch of backup weapons/time travel stuff. Cromartie is (temporarily) blown up and the Connors are sent a few years into the future, leaving everyone to think they're dead so that they can get the authorities off their backs.
From there, Cameron acts as the Connor family’s brutally efficient hatchet woman. She does a lot over the course of the show, but just to highlight a few notable contributions:
- Sarah tries to get false ids from an old friend of hers, only for him to rat them out to the FBI. Cameron guns him down without hesitation.
- The main mcguffin for the first season is the Turk, an AI that the Connors believe will evolve into Skynet. Due to shenanigans, it goes missing, and Cameron tracks down one of its co-creators for information on its possible whereabouts by befriending his sister. Unfortunately for the creator, he owes money to the mob. Once Cameron uses the sister to find him, she promises to help them out if they tell her what she wants… except no, once she gets what she needs, she leaves them both to die as the mobsters show up to their apartment.
- While all this is going down, Cromartie continues to hunt the Connors. When he shows up to their high school in search of their current aliases, Cameron has one of John’s friends pretend to be him, throwing Cromartie off the scent.
- Due to unrelated incidents, Cameron gets blown up by mobsters. This damages her and reverts her back to Terminator mode, leading her to begin gunning for the Connors with everything she has. They just barely manage to restrain her for reprogramming, and even then? Summer Glau gives a fucking amazingly gut-wrenching performance as the normally emotionless Cameron tries, but ultimately fails, to trick John into thinking she’s already repaired.
- Once that’s over with, Cameron goes back to being the Connors’ personal hitwoman. When some thieves break into their house, Cameron executes all but one of them so that they don’t leave any leads for Cromartie to follow them. The last thief is spared by Sarah, against Cameron’s advice… and, of course, Cromartie finds him and uses him to kidnap Sarah. Shenanigans ensue, and Cameron ambushes Cromartie with uranium shotgun shells to end him for good.
- One episode features Cameron single handedly uncovering a decades-old scheme by Skynet to assassinate the mayor of California. A Terminator, sent to kill him at a specific hotel, was accidentally sent to the 1930s, and built a massive construction company for the specific purpose of building the hotel and hiding within its walls until the mayor it needs to kill enters to do a press conference. Cameron, after recognizing this Terminator in an old photograph, spends a night researching his activities to discern what he was up to, before hunting down and killing him the night before the assassination. The same episode reveals that Cameron has befriended a librarian offscreen, but her bluntness—scanning and casually telling him that his cancer has returned—alienates him... though when she learns he quit his job after, she doesn't skip a beat repeating the process by befriending his replacement.
- Shortly after this, Catherine Weaver (a rogue Terminator against the machine’s regime) massacres a factory full of Skynet agents. The Connors attend the funeral, but Cameron notices some of the relatives of the victims aren’t exactly grieving; she correctly deduces that some of the workers survived and faked their deaths in the massacre, leading the Connors to uncover the greater conspiracy of Skynet already being active in the present day.
Come the finale, Weaver and the Connors’ plotlines finally converge. Weaver has been working on her own AI; the Connors believe it to be Skynet, but it’s really a benevolent program by the name of John Henry. Weaver’s faction in the future had previously been contacted by the human Resistance about a possible alliance, which they had originally refused. Now though, Weaver extends a new offer to Cameron. While the Connors confront Weaver, still thinking her to be evil, Cameron searches Weaver’s skyscraper for John Henry, agreeing to their offer by installing some of her own brain into him. With this, John Henry is able to time travel into the future, for some mysterious gambit in a season 3 that never came about.
Mitigating factors?
Cameron is an amazing supporting character and more than a worthy successor for The Ahnold as the Terminator on the side of good. She's always on top of the situation, ready and willing to kill whatever needs killing without hesitation, whether it be enemy agents of Skynet or inconvenient civilians. It's her ingenuity and ruthlessness that keeps the Connors from getting themselves killed twenty times over.
That's not to say she's perfect, of course. Cameron's first response to most problems is to kill it, which creates problems when she thinks John's girlfriend is a liability—this is all part of a long-con by another time-travelling Resistance member to get Cameron to kill the girlfriend and turn John against her—but she ultimately restrains her impulses. It helps that issues like this, rather than just her being murder happy, are inclinations that have been severely exasperated by the malfunctions that come from the aforementioned "getting blown up by mobsters" thing. But she always remains stoic throughout these tribulations, and ultimately always reaffirms her control—while providing John with a method to remotely kill her, just in case something does ever malfunction beyond repair.
She's also a bit socially awkward, such as with that thing with her librarian friend. But A) She's a robot who is both bad at that stuff and doesn't really care most of the time, B) Those few times she does care, she's clearly putting in effort and doing her best, and C) Her sheer badassness is always enough to overshadow it.
Edited by EmeraldEmperor on Jan 6th 2024 at 2:46:45 PM
Goku Black
Cameron
Buzz
to Cameron (Why does that name ring a bell?)
Edited by Paperfly on Jan 6th 2024 at 7:49:35 PM
Image Pickin' Backlog
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Alright my scissors seven example.
So bit of background. So Xuanwu (which prizes magic and martial arts) is in a war with the country of technologists Stan/Stern (fuck another weird case of the dub and sub alternating). They both have been attempting to conquer territoriy and chicken island is in nwteen so both sides jostle for control. Which brings us to Seven's rival
Who is the Prince of Stern/Stan?
Magnificent?
Ofc. He's smart, a brilliant fighter, a genuine well intentioned extremist and legit grows to care about people. He's also got a wonderuk charming protrayal by Crispin Freeman.
Bastard?
Well yeah. He was fine destroying chicken island and fights seven to the death. But he also legit thinks he's helping the world, he did warn them to evacuate compared to later villains who intentionally target civilians, and tries a more peaceful approach later. And we'll he's now become a more reasonable person. It's also not played anywhere near as much horror as the massacre that his rival the Xuanwu leader does. Which also does help that his rival is way nastier.
Plus I need to specify he's not actually involved in the kidnapping and experimenkng of people from super power country. That scheme was way before he came to power after his dad died and the fact it's continuing is not something he's aware off till that season 3 episode.
Conclusion?
Honestly easy keep. As for the future. I think Thirteen's sister Plum blossom eleven could keep if we get more from her. And maybe a few more from Xuanwu and Stern/Stan.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."