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
The MILF Virus
Sorry that I'm doing this post again, but in-case it was missed, what do you think of this images?
Goku Black
For Tekken. O have this quote
Jogo
The Beatrice Images are all get a ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
from me.
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I can’t really tell what’s going on in the forth one, but the other three are good. 
Memetic Loser Mother
4x The first one has a watermark
I'm Sad Frogerson.
Alright, with a unanimous 13 for Doctor Doom, here's my write-up for Doctor Doom:
- Doctor Doom's Fearfall: Doctor Victor Von Doom is the ruler of Latveria and the arch-enemy of the Fantastic Four. As part of his plans for world domination, Doctor Doom creates a Trans-Thermal Fusion Dynamo capable of crushing the Fantastic Four and anyone else who opposes him. He commissions the construction of the Tower of Doom to harvest the fear of anyone who rides it and concentrates it into fuel to power the Fusion Dynamo. The people of Latveria are required by law to ride the Tower as part of their national duty at the risk of their own lives. Eventually, Doom transports the Tower to America to gain new test subjects and lures unsuspecting guests by disguising it as a theme park ride. Once the guests reach the launch platform, Doom disables the ride's safety procedures to terrify the guests even further. Doom congratulates them after the extraction process is over and boasts how he now has the power he needs to defeat the Fantastic Four once and for all.
I also created a new Theme Park folder on Magnificent Bastard Other Media, since Doom is our first Theme Park candidate.
A Girl, Just One of Many Kinds
Here we go, another candidate from the show Regular Show, a show that needs no introduction. This candidate is from the episode “Benson’s Pig” where the candidate is the titular character….a pig. Yes really.
Who is Apple Sauce? What Does He Do?
- A cute looking pig, Apple Sauce was adopted by Benson through the Oink Foundation and assigns Mordecai and Rigby to watch him over and take him to his apartment.
- However, it’s revealed Apple Sauce was named Leroy, one half of a diabolical robbing crew, alongside his friend Harry Roughauser. Leroy was the brains of the operation while Harry was the muscle. However, Leroy and Harry have a falling out as Leroy wanted to settle down, and the two separate.
- Harry gets arrested due to a botch robbery and contacts Apple Sauce to break him out. Apple Sauce uses his cute appearance to be Beneath Suspicion, and during a lunch break with Mordecai and Rigby, he purposely gets himself arrested by the police and manages to break himself and Harry out of prison.
- He gets Mordecai and Rigby to drive them to stash away in Benson’s apartment as Harry and Apple Sauce are being searched for. Despite Harry wanting to leave and restart crime, Apple Sauce refuses as he still wants to leave a good life. Harry begins raging out and tries destroying Benson’s apartment, but after seeing Apple Sauce, he decides to let him go.
- Then the police storm in and shoot non lethal bean bags (this was post-censorship Cartoon Network) at Harry and he goes down, where him and Apple Sauce share a tender moment as Harry takes the fall for everything, and Apple Sauce gets away and lives with Benson. Because, well..he’s a pig. And Apple Sauce lives a happy life with Benson.
Is He Magnificent?
He’s other brains of a robbing spree duo who manages to rob banks successfully for years, and manages to break out Harry from prison by purposely getting arrested, and manages to escape prison due to his cute nature and well…being a pig.
Is He A Bastard?
Was part of a robbing duo who robbed banks for a living and destroying a donut shop to get arrested before busting jis partner out of prison.
Verdict?
Yup
Keep Fighting. Keep Loving.
The MILF Virus
Got one without the watermark. Found one that is so perfect, the character doesn't qualify.
This is so good, but she's too evil to count. Disappointing when she has as many good image as Beato.
EDIT: Apple Sauce
Edited by TheImmortalAngelNewton on Mar 11th 2024 at 11:03:55 PM
"Are you the devil?" "Don't compare to me to those small fry" - Mir
for Apple Sauce. I'm good with any of the Beatrice images, but as I said my favorite is the third one.
for Apple Sauce and Beatrice's first and third pic
Edited by MiraiYuji on Mar 11th 2024 at 5:31:53 PM
Lord
I’m not sure if this has been brought up already and if it has then ignore me but I really think the new version of Ozai in Avatar 2024 may count as an MB. In case anyone hasn’t seen it, he used Zhao’s entire campaign to weaken his enemies whilst serving as a distraction for his real goal of sending Azula to lay waste to the Earth Kingdom. He’s a lot more patient and switched on than the original and carefully avoids potentially alienating either of his children with favouritism, by holding out the bone to both of them without ever actually giving it to either of them, and although he’s still tough, he’s a lot fairer on Zuko. Whether or not he’ll turn out to be as much a Complete Monster as the original as well remains to be seen but even then I definitely think the new Ozai may well count as a Bastard of the Magnificent variety, or at least be worth keeping an eye on.
Thoughts welcome.
Edited by Etrebamort on Mar 11th 2024 at 5:40:39 PM
Lord Etrabamort
Lies and Violence!
Apple sauce.
Ozai is still far too cruel to properly count here. Even if he's smarter in his strategies, he still horribly tortures and exiles his own son just to make a point, only walking back on the latter when the wild goose chase unexpectedly yields results.
Edited by EmeraldEmperor on Mar 11th 2024 at 1:43:24 PM
Lord
That’s where the “Bastard” part comes in!
Lord Etrabamort
Lies and Violence!
Villains can still be so evil that it overshadows the “Magnificent” component. That’s why there are so few crossovers between this trope and Complete Monster; it’s possible, but things like burning your kid’s face off tends to push you to the latter end of the spectrum.
Lord
True, true, and of course I’ll respect whatever decision the community arrives at but just to play ‘’advocatus diaboli’’, the two are still not mutually exclusive. Hans Gruber forced a pregnant woman to stand on top of a building along with a load of other innocent people to serve as cannon fodder. That’s what made him a bastard, but it didn’t undermine his magnificence. Now if we were talking Don Giovanni or Oswald Danes, I would absolutely say “NOOOO! Bastards yes, but DEFINITELY not magnificent, no matter how cunning or stylish.” But I still think Ozai 24 is in with a chance.
Edited by Etrebamort on Mar 11th 2024 at 6:48:22 PM
Lord Etrabamort
I don't think you're understanding the definition of the word "bastard" here.
Plus, when you typed "bastard" the blue text goes to Complete Monster, which doesn't help your case.
I don't think live action Ozai has done anything too bad to qualify so far, and we've had plenty of approved MB candidates do various worse. I'm saying hold off for now since he's likely to get far worse down the line.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
Well, I for one think Ozai is already past the limit of what is acceptable for a Magnificent Bastard. He challenged his own thirteen years old boy to an Agni Kai, burned his face before banishing him until he captures what everyone expected to be a fully realized 109 years old Avatar with only a bunch of newbies as back-up... which was pretty much a death sentence. All that, for the sole crime of speaking out of turn and refusing to buy into the twisted ideals of the Fire Nation which are the main responsible for the hundreds of years of suffering and bloodshed upon every other nation. The show even makes it a point to show how badly Ozai fucked Zuko up that day when Aang accidentally presses his Trauma Button by talking about compassion and by the end of the season showing how broken he is when he realizes his father has only been using him to motivate Azula.
This is an hideously abusive behavior that I believe should stay away from this trope, even if he doesn't eventually turn into the same genocidal bastard as Sozin and his animated counterpart.
Edited by MiraiYuji on Mar 11th 2024 at 9:09:32 AM
Barb / Temporary Kylo
Yeah while Ozai is a bit smarter in the Netflix version and I really like him as a villain, I'd say so far he is still portrayed more as a hideously evil monster then this trope. And even if the argument was there for it not being too much so far, he will almost certainly become even worse with the next few seasons.
The First man
I feel like...that's not that bad on its own? Like I definitely feel like Ozai will get much worse with genocide and stuff, but we've definitely gotten softer on the bastard aspect. There are many approved candidates, especially from the early days, who have done worse.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
I’ll take a potato chip… and EAT IT!
Abusive Parents is a gigantic hot button issue Lore, I know we’ve approved some terrible parents before, but all of those do genuinely care about their kids in their own way, Ozai burning his son’s face and banishing his son is portrayed as a gigantic Kick the Dog moment driven by Ozai’s ego.
In honor of Akira Toriyama
Even if I actually believed many approved candidates were as cruel and petty (the Fire Lord felt so personally attacked by his 13 years old boy criticizing his plan that he challenged him to an Agni Kai to assert his dominance. Quite petty in my book) as Ozai towards their own flesh and blood, the narrative itself puts way more focus on his monstruous behavior and the consequences towards Zuko (and the world at large) than his tactical acumen.
The problem isn't only the act in itself, but also the "not cool" factor the show is going for with Ozai's deeds.
Edited by MiraiYuji on Mar 11th 2024 at 11:03:58 AM
Dagded Dujardin
He also then "praises" Zuko just so he can make Azula motivated to be a better soldier and does the opposite when it suites him so neither of his children cooperate with each other and one of them becomes a controllable weapon for him. That's hardly "hidden care"
"Bingo! If two species hate each other, they will wipe each other out on their own."
That sounds like many evil parents we've approved. If anything, you're only selling me on Ozai more.
Edited by LoreDeluxe on Mar 11th 2024 at 3:14:27 AM
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.
Also, I have a writeup for Reginald at last. Please tell me if it can work: