Discussion SoYouWantTo / WriteAMagnificentBastard

I agree with that idea, though it would be better if it had its own page. There's already a page listing villains who qualify as both Complete Monsters and Magnificent Bastards, and it would be great to have a page for writers to know how to make villains like those, as they can be even more interesting than those who are solely CMs or MBs.

I'm not really sure how the instructions should be like, but I can help in making a page about that.

IMO, both Iago and The Joker belong to the treat with caution section, as both are irredemable Complete Monsters despite all their magnificence.

Iago is being moved. And you know what? I would seriously dispute The Joker. He's not much of a chessmaster and he's too insane to be an effective Manipulative Bastard. He's missing two key traits there. This isn't the page for "awesome villain" it's the page for "How to Write an MB." We want classic examples.

Actually, The Joker is an extremely competant Chessmaster. Want proof?

Here you go:

FIRST SCENE: BANK ROBBERY

1) Bank Manager has both Joker (disguised as Bozo) and Grumpy pinned down. During a brief period of silence, Grumpy asks if the Bank Manager is out of ammo. The Joker, who has been counting the whole time, knows that the Bank Manager has only one shot left but tells Grumpy that he's out of ammo. Grumpy leaps out of cover and the bank manager shoots at him leaving himself defenseless for when Joker attacks him while he's out.

2) The ENTIRE HEIST was timed to coincide with the Gotham City School Bus Department's timetable. By making his escape in a school bus and timing the heist so that the bus's would be going past at just the right time for him to slip into the line. He ensured the perfect gettaway. After all, no one looking for a gettaway car is going to suspect a line of school bus's.

MURDER OF COMMISSIONER LOEB AND JUDGE SORILLA:

1) This one's actually pretty straight-forward. He made sure the commissioner's favourite brandy was laced with explosives, and ensured that it was his own men disguised as police officers who pick up Sorilla and trick her into getting into a car that is rigged to blow.

ASSASSINATION OF MAYOR GARCIA:

One of Joker's more brilliant moves.

1) Because the parade is in am area filled with windows, the police are going to be focusing their attention on the buildings, rather than the street below where the real threat is.

2) The Joker ties up the original firing squad and places them in a room in one of the buildings. Of course Batman finds them, but the Joker had already planned for this eventuality, setting a trap for the batman. By the window is a scope over looking the city below. As the Joker anticipates, Batman's natural curiosity compels him to take a look. When he does however he causes the blinds to fly open, revealing himself to the cops who, already jittery from The Joker's terror tactics, will shoot at the "assassin" if they kill him, okay. If they don't, still okay because that movement distracts them from the real threat of the fake firing squad.

"It's not that simple. With The Joker, it never is." - Batman

EVERYTHING BETWEEN THE CAR CHASE AND RACHEL'S DEATH.

This is where the Joker proves his status as a Magnificent Bastard.

1) He diverts all of of the armoured vans down Lower Fifth where, as one cop put's it "We'll be sitting ducks!". Special points for using a Fire Truck ON FIRE!! (Irony, thy name is Joker :-))

2) When the armoured cars finally get topside, they immediately call for air support. However The Joker predicted they would do this and set up a trap to snare the helicopter.

3) So the Joker is captured and the day is saved!! Except the Joker PLANNED to get caught.

A) he has his men kidnap Harvey and Rachel and place them no opposite sides of the city. Giving directions to each of their locations. Now the Joker is Dangerously Genre-Savvy and knows that Batman is all but guarrenteed to save whoever he goes after, and incorporates this into his plan. He invokes Always Save the Girl so that Batman will rescue Harvey while thinking that he's saving Rachel. You see The Joker doesn't want to merely kill Dent, he want's to break him so that if can use him as his ace in the hole for his ultimate plan to corrupt the citizens of Gotham.

B) His escape was planned from the beginning as he had an inmate planted within the MCU who is rigged with explosives. While the majority of the Major Crimes Unit is running around like headless chooks trying to save Dent, the joker executes his plan.

C) even more brilliant: by looking himself within the MCU he ensures that he will be able to bypass Gordan's security, and capture Lau (the chinese man in charge of the mobs funds. At the beginning, Gordan locked him in the MCU in order to keep him safe from The Mob and The Joker. The Joker knew that the only way to get to Lau was to allow himself to be captured. Thus putting him in the same building as Lau, with am escape plan already in place.)

Couple of things—first of all you are only talking about the film version. The comic version never really hits MB. Second of all, the film is so blatantly on the side of the Ledger!Joker that considering him an MB becomes an incredibly difficult prospect. His schemes run entirely on luck, and tend to fall apart if you think about them too hard (seriously, I could write a dissertation on what's wrong with the end of that film), and his general nastiness kills any audience ability to sympathise.

You make a couple of good points, now allow me to present my counter-points:

• "You are only talking about the film version."
  • Yes, I thought that it was clear from the beginning that everyone was talking about the film version.
• "His schemes run entirely on luck."
  • Hmm... I'm not sure you actually read my previous post, since I just explaind at length the amount of foresight and pre-planning involved in his schemes.

• "His general nastiness kills any audience ability to sympathise."
  • True. However, I would argue that having the audiences sympathy, is not neccessary so long as you have the audiences admiration and respect (A Magnificent Bastard is STILL a Bastard after all), and admiration and respect is something Ledger!Joker gets in spades.In fact, considering the strong Draco in Leather Pants treatment he gets, one could even argue that he does have audience sympathy(Though in this case, that might not be a good thing.)

I feel Heath Ledger Joker deserves a mention in Treat with Caution though, since he's one of the most commonly mistaken instances of being this trope and in fairness is pretty damn close to it.

Agreed. While some level of audience sympathy is useful for *most* M Bs, it doesn't work for all of them. Certainly you have overlaps of Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard and they get short shrift now.

This is a page about Magnificent Bastard, which is to some degree an Audience Reaction. If your example doesn't trigger that reaction it doesn't work for the trope.

Agreed, and we were never doubting that. We are just skeptical of whether the Audience Reaction an MB rests on is *necessarily sympathetic.*

A lot of examples are, make no mistake about it. But I'd almost argue sympathy is less important persee than how impressed the audience is by the character in question.

^ What he said. Love to Hate is an Audience Reaction that relies on the villain NOT being sympathetic. Besides, there's a reason they call it a Magnificent Bastard.

I suppose that if everybody else in the cast is an utter moron then it would be a lot harder to consider somebody an MB.

The basic problem is that you "love to hate" a Magnificent Bastard. You simply loathe a Complete Monster. There's no "love to" about the hate for him. You just hate him.

Actually that definition has been changed in recent years. There are PLENTY of Complete Monsters {Cell, Freeza, Johan, The Joker, Bellatrix Lestrange, Professor Umbridge, Jim Moriarty, Abridged!Freeza, Lord Xykon, Judge Claude Frollo) who are all listed on the Love to Hate page. Complete Monster does not mean "Villain everyone despises." that's Hate Sink, or The Scrappy.

Adrian certainly, especially in the sense that he gets people talking and has audience sympathy up the gazoo. Servalan though - bit obscure? Not to mention her Bond Villain Stupidity.

It doesn't actually say to avoid those things. It says to use them carefully. The main thing is that the MB, like the Smug Snake, usually isn't as good as he thinks he is. The difference is, that unlike the Smug Snake, it's not as apparent. A Smug Snake will try to drive home how much smarter they are than the hero; thus when they lose, we tend to notice that it's due to arrogance. An MB, on the contrary, is usually so self-assured that we notice not the failure (and how deserved it was) but how close they came to success.

In short, the Smug Snake and the MB have almost the same flaws typically. The difference is all in how it's presented.

The best way to limit an MB is to give them a Worthy Opponent in series; if that's not doable for whatever reason, making them proud/hubristic (which isn't quite the same thing as arrogant, which is what Smug Snakes are) might work. Another possible weakness can be something which the Magnificent Bastard is particularly attached to, such as a Morality Pet, Love Interest, or treasured object; this will show that your Bastard is still emotionally vulnerable, which goes a long way toward humanizing him and making him not seem so invincible. Finally, limiting his appearances in the work is also a good idea, since if he's in every scene winning and showing everyone just how clever he is, he'll seem like a Villain Sue or a Wesley.

Also, remember that for all his planning and manipulation, there WILL be something that the MB fails to take into account

I would also like to add that the difference between a Smug Snake, Magnificent Bastard and Villain Sue, is how they handle the set back of defeat

• Villain Sue: He never loses in the first place, and if he does, he quickly reveals it to have all been part of his Xanatos Roulette.

Smug Snake: "No this can not be!!!!! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!!!!!!"

Magnificent Bastard: After spending about 30 seconds in shock. The Bastard congratulates the hero on his ingenuity, before using his manipulation ability and remaining resources, to make an awesome comeback

If your aim is to create a genuine MB in a first person story (as opposed to simply an exceptionally memorable villain) one thing you might do is a set up a Big Bad Friend situation. If you do this, we'll get to see the MB's manipulations in full effect as he uses them on the hero himself. This is also a case where cranking up the secondary tropes is exceedingly important.

Thanks. Oh, do the examples in the Treat With Caution still barely count as Magnificent Bastards or are they NOT Magnificent Bastards at all?

I also think that Blatant Lies should be removed because if the lies are too blatant, instead of making the Magnificent Bastard look magnificent it will make the heroes look like they're carrying the Idiot Ball. Social Engineering should be added in its place because the Social Engineering tropes (Bavarian Fire Drill, Reverse Psychology, Sarcastic Confession, etc.) are all focused on convincing people to do things they normally wouldn't do and thus greatly fit the Manipulative Bastard (which is one of the essential ingredients of a Magnificent Bastard).

I also think we should add Iago from Othello to the examples of the greats. If I had to take a shot at explaining why:

• Iago from Othello is a Shakespearean example of a Magnificent Bastard. He uses his influence to get his pieces into place, effortlessly manipulates the titular character's jealously, and even pulls off a Xanatos Gambit or two all while maintaining his nickname of "Honest Iago". He's been described as a "motiveless malignity" and his true motives ultimately remain unclear with his Famous Last Words essentially being a Take That! to anyone trying to decipher his final goal. He takes the concept of Villains Act, Heroes React to an extreme by essentially being the only character who "acts" while everyone else in the play is merely "reacting" to his actions. Iago is a good example of how to write a Magnificent Bastard in a story with a small cast of characters.

Nevermind. I'll just add them in myself and let Wiki Magic do the rest.

True. I would like to know if it is offically (by tvtropes standards) possible to have a villain that is a Magnificent Bastard and a Complete Monster at the same time.

If audience reactions are the issue, then this Magnificent Bastard/Complete Monster combo villain could cause audiences to become conflicted/split on whether they should hate or admire the villain. Both tropes are YMMV after all.

I don't see why a villain can't meet the five requirements for Complete Monster and the four requirements for Magnificent Bastard. The Dark Knight Joker and Hans Landa are stellar examples of this intriguing fusion.

Of course it's possible. But it's very, very tricky. This is a page on how to write a good, solid MB, not how to fuse the trope with CM. That's why examples that totally cross the Moral Event Horizon are not requested—they provide poor inspiration to inexperienced authors. The kind of authors who can pull the fusion off (such as the writers of Hans Landa and Johan) don't need this pages' help,

Also, which version of the Joker are we talking about? The comicbook variant displays little in the way of Chessmaster ability, and often is little more than a Laughably Evil Large Ham. The Jack Nicholson variant is too Axe-Crazy to have a plan, and the Heath Ledger version...his scheme only works because the plot bends over backwards to accomodate him. Remember, MB and Love to Hate are not interchangeable. They often overlap, but they're not interchangeable.

It's doable, but it's not easy, because you need to make them monstrously evil, as well as equally intelligent and charismatic at the same time. If he's deeply evil, but his Chessmastery, Manipulative Bastard tendencies, and charisma overshadow this, he'll just be a Magnificent Bastard who does horrible things, not a completely vile and repulsive Complete Monster. If the reverse happens, where the evil overtakes the Magnificent Bastardry, then he will just be a Complete Monster, full stop. Using Johan as an example, he's certainly quite bad, but the story makes him into a Magnificent Bastard as well as a Complete Monster by turning his intelligence and charisma Up To Eleven, but not shying away from the extremity of his evil. Explaining how to do this properly would take too long, and even then, it's very easy to screw up, which is why the page just says to avoid a Moral Event Horizon.

I remember a quote that describes a Magnificent Monster perfectly is -

''"He's the type of character that you want to hate, but on some level you have to admit 'Damn! He's good' in other words, while you are absolutely horrified by the cruelty of his actions, you have to admire the style in which he pulls it off. Take a look at Xykon he's a Complete Monster and yet every Moral Event Horizon crossing is listed as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for him.

I would say, yes. After all, the Magnificent Bastard definition doesn't require Magnificence from his underlings. I just wouldn't overdo it, otherwise one begins to question why he surrounds himself with ineptitude in the first place.

Thanks. One more thing, I think that Dangerously Genre-Savvy and Wicked Cultured should be added to the Supplementary Tropes. I would add them myself, but I really can't think up of a detailed explanation on why these would be good suplementary tropes. I also think that Grand Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars should be added to the examples of the greats. He's a Dangerously Genre-Savvy Wicked Cultured Chess Master who uses Pragmatic Villainy and the Sherlock Scan and was even the trope picture for a while.

Anyone agree with these suggestions? I wonder if anyone will answer this. HELLO! ANY TROPERS OUT THERE!!!

I'm the guy who wrote the original page (as well as it's self-appointed minder). The reason that Thrawn isn't in the examples is that I'm not that familiar with the character, and already had a military example in Treize. If you can write him up in a way that doesn't simply repeat what's in our other military examples, go ahead, but please be very careful. As for Wicked Cultured and Dangerously Genre-Savvy...if you can't think of a reason for them to be their, that might indicate that they shouldn't be.

Thanks for replying. I didn't mean that I couldn't think of a reason to add Wicked Cultured and Dangerously Genre-Savvy, it's just that I'm not that good at thinking up of detailed yet interesting ways to phrase my reasons. If I had to give it a try:

• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Goes hand-in-hand with Pragmatic Villainy. Many non-magnificent villains often make the cliched mistakes audiences have seen over 9000 times and get defeated by them. A Magnificent Bastard with this trope can see these coming and can easily defy these mistakes or even intentionally bring them about as part of a Batman Gambit or Xanatos Gambit.
• Wicked Cultured: This trope can easily go hand-in-hand with Affably Evil, Villainous Fashion Sense, or even The Chessmaster. It can make the Magnificent Bastard look intelligent and/or it could even make him look Badass by having him kick ass to Mozart or quoting Shakespeare as part of a Pre-Mortem One-Liner or Bond One-Liner.

I also know you said to be careful about Evil Gloating, but can a Magnificent Bastard still indulge in this if he finds a way to use this effectively? (for example: instead of gloating about his plans because of arrogance, he's intentionally gloating about how the heroes have missed the "weaknesses" in the plan as part of a Batman Gambit or Xanatos Gambit to trick the heroes into taking advantage of those "weaknesses" and furthering his real goal in the process)

There's nothing wrong with legitimate Evil Gloating either. Look at Beast Wars Megatron, Dr. Doom and loads of others. The trick is just to never take it so far that he looks like an idiot. That's why it's listed as a trope to be careful with. A really good Evil Gloat, especially if combined with Hannibal Lecture, "The Reason You Suck" Speech, or a Motive Rant can be something an audience remembers for years. Just don't make them stupid about it.

Your descriptions are fine. Add 'em.

Thanks. Adding them now.

It would be hard. Subvert sure—you set a character up as an MB then reveal that they're really just a high-functioning Smug Snake. But deconstruction? How would you do it?

As I said before, I would probably deconstruct the individual aspects of what makes a Magnificent Bastard. My guess:

• The Chessmaster: They may be so busy planning for every likely outcome that they will unable to be able to live for the present.
• Manipulative Bastard: They may be good at manipulating people and their emotions and desires, but ultimatly will be unable to truly connect with them.
• Large Ham: I honestly have no idea how to deconstruct a Large Ham
• The Trickster: See The Chessmaster above.
• Wicked Cultured: Being high class and "worldly", it will most likely be difficult for them to enjoy the simple things in life since being cultured often comes with high standards.

I think Tom from Millers Crossing could count as a deconstructed Magnificent Bastard. He successfully plays both mob families during a mob war so that his best friend stays on top, but he frequently gets beaten up and ultimatly ends up alienating his best friend, Leo, and the woman he loves, Verna, who end up marrying each other.

That sounds more like a subversion of the magnificent part than a true deconstruction. If you want to deconstruct this, just have them win.

You can't really deconstruct Large Ham. It's a character trait, not an ability. It's like trying to deconstruct Blue Eyes. Doesn't really work.

What you've got their probably would be a deconstruction. Problem is, a lot of people likely wouldn't recognise it as such. They'd simply see him as a Smug Snake or something similar.

He didn't win the Beast Wars. He won inbetween series by sending a virus ahead of him to Cybertron. He got his ass kicked in the finale by the Maximals.

Then rewrite him. I didn't write him up. Also, the fact that he recieves Draco in Leather Pants treatment is arguably a bad thing—a good bastard is recognisable as the villain. Love to Hate is what we want here. And he also goes through some pretty major Villain Decay and Badass Decay. If you want to expand his entry, that's great, but please, leave him were he is. He's not clear-cut enough for The Greats section.