Characters who are both Magnificent Bastards and Complete Monsters

I’m very interested in the tropes Magnificent Bastard and Complete Monster, as well as characters who strike the balance between those two, like Dimentio from Super Paper Mario and Flowey from Undertale Yellow. I’d like to hear some of your favourites too!

Edited by Jestro on Dec 17th 2023 at 2:13:53 AM

Characters who are both Magnificent Bastards and Complete Monsters are listed in both tropes.

This is not a general chat forum by the way.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 17th 2023 at 8:40:25 AM

Whoops. Didn’t realise this wasn’t the correct forum. Which do I switch it to?

Near as I can tell, this has always been the forum for "talking about tropes" beyond the context of just the wiki itself, but in recent years most of the discussion has shifted towards talking about trope definitions and tropeworthiness, especially as the TRS backlog has punted some of the "does this need TRS at all?" discussion out here. So I'm not sure this is the wrong forum per se, just that the sort of discussion this seems to be calling for has become vanishingly rare.

The only character I know who's both is Darkrai from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers.

I know V.V. Argost off the top of my head.

Perhaps a new trope could be made that combines these two tropes.

Perhaps call it Machiavellian Complete Monster.

Did there not use to be a sandbox documenting CM/MB crossovers?

It got deleted; the CM and MB threads went through major changes recently.

It was cut for being off-mission

Absolutely not. We have enough problems with people trying for "crossovers" without them being official

There is Hans Gruber who is probably the best know crossover between the two tropes.

If the curiosity is just about the number, I recall there being about 50 odd "crossovers", accounting for additions since that page was axed. I'll also note that that version of Flowey isn't on either list and Dimentio actually got cut from MB (There was a discussion that can be searched if you're curious). Dudley Smith is my personal favourite but I'm not sure I agree with the idea of running a thread to document crossover cases between the tropes, it seems to circumvent the demand to delete the sandbox page cataloguing them (For the record, I know this wasn't your intent, I'm just trying to communicate my interpretation of the mods' ruling) and I'm not sure this will be allowed to say but I get the fun feeling to it and if it is tooled into something that's deemed to further the wiki I'll happily participate.

Though the intent was supposed to be a fun discussion regarding the crossover between the two tropes and perhaps a way to circumvent the deletion of the crossover sandbox, but this presents an opportunity to create a new trope, a Machiavellian Complete Monster perhaps.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 20th 2023 at 11:52:16 AM

No, we really don't need to blend the two tropes with insane histories of misuse and major rules about addition into one trope that is ultimately not going to be any more practical than just having both tropes on the YMMV page.

Only characters I know of that count as both are VV Argost, Darkrai, and Ultron

I believe that this thread belongs in Yack Fest rather than Trope Talk as we mainly discuss which characters belong in both tropes in this thread rather than discussing the tropes themselves.

Trope Talk is mainly discussing the tropes themselves and what might need fixing. Discussing characters that could potentially fit multiple tropes without creating a new trope or one that could be yarded sounds more like Yack Fest.

I am just letting everyone know this as we usually don't have general trope chat in the Trope Talk forum due to the existence of the Yack Fest forum, though this thread could be excused for being created by a relatively new user who may not be familiar with the forums.

Yes, this is quite a controversial thread discussing characters who hold two of the most negative traits possible on TV Tropes. I know a few, but I would rather not say, with the sole exception of Darkrai.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 20th 2023 at 3:25:56 PM

One of the MB rules is that they can't be too much of a bastard, so I feel like C Ms wouldn't qualify by definition.

In this case, they should be mutually exclusive, and based on this definition, there are no characters who are both.

Manipulative Bastard should be rewritten as to exclude Complete Monster.

No, they are not mutually exclusive and no definitions need rewriting, but a crossover trope is an incredibly bad idea. As stated elsewhere, it's not just impractical, but the idea of "crossovers" has led to far more trouble than it's worth. I genuinely cannot think of anything that a hypothetical trope would be besides a massive pain in the ass.

Indeed, they are not mutually exclusive. Having both of them overlapping is not a trope in itself, which is what led to the deletion of the sandbox in the first place.

What Star and Snowy said... this topic was the matter of a length discussion on the original Magnificent Bastard thread, it makes no sense to preclude Complete Monster from MB when not all CMs commit revolting crimes that go "too far" for one to still be seen as magnificent. Hans Gruber's not a rapist, a violent bigot or grossly sadistic... he's a greedy man with a clever but cruel plan for a pay day; I'm really not behind the idea of trying to come up with a "combined" trope either, since meshing two tropes that already have to be curated to the point they require a proposal and voting system into one is just a recipe for trouble.

I don't see anything that needs changing on either trope and this thread seems to be misunderstanding many of the conclusions we came to over the literal years of discussion the two items have had.

Yeah, I didn't want to be the one to say anything since I was thinking "the regulars can explain it better than I can", but either way calling for a rule change or rewrite after the minimum amount of discussion isn't all that productive. Even if this hadn't come up before, it would need to be established for certain that something needs to be changed, not just a single post making such an argument.

Yup, and several tropers are genuinely questioning the overlap (if there is), so it's valid here.

As I mentioned earlier, this sort of thread used to be what Trope Talk was all about before it sort of became "TRS lite".