#TV Tropes NUTJOBS!

[ultraericthered]

A tale of two evil Disney kings.

I put this out not to make any statement about how one villain compares to the other, but to compare how similar in the spirit and the details of their evilness these two are; the last straight up Big Bad of a Disney animated movie before the next decade and the first straight up Big Bad of a Disney animated movie we've gotten since.

And I also want to touch upon something that confounds me.

King Magnifico, despite the film teasing at him being a nuanced and even sympathetic character at first, ended up becoming a villain vile and irredeemably heinous enough to be upvoted as a Complete Monster on TV Tropes. Majority vote approved, so that's fair. ...But Turbo, the dude with a similar rap sheet, is still not only ruled a non-example, he's in the "never to be discussed again" category for all the nixing of adding him to the trope ever since 2012. Because why, exactly? I am legitimately finding no good justification for this now.

Turbo locked away his subjects' memories within Sugar Rush's code without giving them any say on the matter (whereas with Magnifico it's at least a contractual arrangement between him and the people who give their wishes to him), and while the Sugar Rush characters don't appear to be acting all that off in any way besides not remembering Vanellope, no one in Rosas really seems to be suffering, depressed, dispirited, and poor off from having given up their wishes and forgotten about them either: it's a frequent criticism that they all seem to happy and prospering, and that the bad side of Magnifico's reign is more told to us than shown. The suffering only really visibly occurs on-screen when Magnifico takes and breaks the wishes (though even then it's written off as "making people feel sad" by a lot of watchers, so it's not easy to argue it's all that heinous). And sure, Turbo's manipulation of Ralph left Ralph with more of a choice to make regarding Vanellope's cart and her ability to race compared to Magnifico with Simon, but that could be argued to make Turbo that much more insidious and reprehensible in his approach.

And then we have Cy-Bug Turbo vocally making clear his intent to overtake all games in the arcade he chooses and forcing Ralph to watch the Cybugs attack Vanellope, comparable to Magnifico vocally making clear his intent to break all wishes in Rosas in order to enslave the despirited masses forever and forcing them all to watch him torture Asha. Yes, the latter might hit harder since it's such a betrayal of all the people he was supposed to be protecting and caring for, but that doesn't make Turbo's climactic villainy any less heinous. Turbo lacks magic powers, he's just a program who overrode that of a Cy-Bug and intends to make full use of the bug's capabilities to infect the lifeblood of other games and to physically harm others, namely Ralph, who he tells straight to his face that he wants to kill. And like Magnifico with the dark magic tome, Turbo's code merging with the Cy-Bug doesn't destroy his moral agency, it only makes him into a more unhinged, unfiltered and destructive version of the same cruel, egomaniacal asshole he already was. The fact that he uses the words "virus", "arcade", and "game" in the same sentence proves he's not merely another instinctive Cy-Bug; he knows exactly what he's doing, and sets out to hurt countless others knowing that he's hurting them not caring, and even relishing it.

Well at least we have other trope wikis to look to if we wish to find Turbo under his rightful classification. He is a Complete Monster, period. With the raw deal TV Tropes has given him for over a whole decade, he's the one who should sing "This Is The Thanks I Get?"

Yes, I am aware that the Complete Monster trope is not a badge of honor or trophy for whatever villain ends up on it,

No, I could not pass up this image.

[orionsangel86]

There is something about proudly proclaiming a show "tumblrista catnip" that makes me emotional.

Something about how for years tumblrinas were ridiculed by show creators.

Something about Supernatural having a meta episode set at a convention with all the weirdo fans that made the main characters uncomfortable. Something something about Becky and the message that fangirls are gross and obsessive.

Something about Sherlock and the way fans were portrayed as crazy obsessive nutjobs for trying to figure out how he faked his death.

Something about creators mocking fandoms, dismissing them as freaks. Something about queer people not being welcome to engage in their creations because "why do you have to make everything gay?"

Something about the malicious culture of queerbaiting throughout the 2000s/2010s, followed by Bury Your Gays tropes across the media landscape because hell, you should be grateful we even gave you queer characters to begin with - and everyone dies in our show! You ain't special!

Something about Destiel questions being banned from conventions...

And then...

Something instead about Good Omens, and letting the story adapt naturally, embracing the fanbase and leaning into the fanservice.

Something about Our Flag Means Death, and the genuine outpouring of love and affection between cast, crew, and fandom that culminated in an explosion of fanworks that were never once mocked or deemed gross or wrong.

Something about Sandman, and staunchly digging in their heels on the queerness of it all, refusing to give in to the homophobes and instead avidly mocking THEM on social media rather than us.

Something about the writers hearing about fandoms favourite ships and excitedly stating that YES! We DID lean into that because it happened naturally and made sense.

Something about a firefighter coming out as bisexual after 7 seasons...

So yeah, something about a new high quality show made FOR US. By creators that love US. Respect US, and WANT our love.

Something about US FINALLY being a target audience for the best shows being made on TV now.

Tumblrista catnip. Creators saying "we made this for you. You are important. Your voices have been heard."

It just... all got a bit overwhelming for a moment there.

[snifekinner]

what is flanderization disease 😭

hey, ty for the ask!

flanderization is a term used to describe the process of a character getting simplified down to exaggerated qualities or quirks over the course of a piece of media (usually one with multiple seasons/installments). it's named for ned flanders off the simpsons (although pretty much every simpsons character would count at this point) to describe how he went from a well meaning christian neighbour and foil to homer in the early series, to being a complete religious nutjob in later series.

i picked it for artie because he gets reduced to being a snarky asshole so much (most of the main characters get flanderized to various degrees though). as a snarky asshole myself it bothers me when people don't let him have more depth of character and he just ends up coming off as mean.

the tvtropes page for more info:

the part i connect w arthur specifically:

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Random Things You Should Know About the Brotherhood in the Comics

Fun fact, there’s been more than one Brotherhood of Mutants, and not all of them were led by Magneto. He wasn't even in all of them! There's a lengthy list of members, some more widely-known than others, these are just some fun facts about a few of the more well-known members.

- Toad has one of the worst backgrounds in the Brotherhood. He was abandoned as a baby by his parents, probably due to his appearance, and grew up in an orphanage where he was bullied and tormented by the other children for the same reason. Toad is actually very intelligent in the comics (he's an expert with machinery!) but due to his shyness and learning disabilities as a child, he was considered to be mentally disabled. I'm not sure what specific learning disabilities he's stated to have had though. I'd really like to know though, so tell me if you do! Between this and the bullying, he dropped out of school at an early age.

He was later recruited by Magneto, and they developed an abusive relationship. Not romantic, mind you, but besides that the dynamics were the same. Toad believed that Magneto cared for him and became dependent on him, while Magneto physically battered him and verbally belittled him. Read more about it HERE

I like Magneto, but people who think Magneto is a good man aside from his villainy need to take a good look at how he treats his followers. He abuses all of them, including Wanda and Pietro, but Toad got it the absolute worst and actually has a form of Battered Spousal Syndrome as a result.

- Pyro and Avalanche are super duper best bro-friends in the comics and I love it so much. Also, while they may or may not actually be lovers, depending on how you want to interpret it (I generally see them as friends), they were used to metaphorically represent gay lovers in THIS issue.

- Pyro is not an aggressive fire-obsessed nutjob like in Evolution or the movies. He's not angry, he's not insane, he's not a pyromaniac. He's a very nice, normal dude who just also happens to be a fire-controlling super-villain. Besides terrorism, he's also an author who writes Gothic romance novels. I'm not making this up, it's canon and it's terrific and I love it so much.

- Pyro's first name in the comics is St. John, not just John like the movies. It's pronounced Sinjin, I think. He's Australian, maybe it's a more normal name there? Also, speaking of him being Australian, his buddy Avalanche is an immigrant from the Greek island of Crete, and Toad is from England, specifically York.

- Pyro once saved a group of children from a T-rex

- Daredevil once tricked the Blob into getting jealous that Pyro always got the girls on their Freedom Force missions so that the two of them would fight with each other, suggesting Pyro is probably a ladies man ;D

- Once, when Pyro thought he was going to die, he held Mystique's hand and said "Worse ways to go, than with friends" ;A;

- But Pyro did NOT in fact die then. His death would come later. He contracted the Legacy Virus, and his last act alive was saving the life of Senator Kelly, a man he'd once tried to assassinate. The strain of this good deed was too much on Pyro's weakened body, and he passed away with a plea to Senator Kelly to change things for the better. Kelly promised that he would, and he kept his word, changing his anti-mutant stance and working towards improving mutant/human relations instead. Sadly, this led to Kelly being assassinated by a human who felt he'd turned traitor.

- Just as Pyro was made American in the movies, Avalanche and Toad were made American in the cartoons.

- Toad's real name is Mortimer Toynbee in the comics, and Avalanche is Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis. In X-Men: Evolution, they were re-named Todd Tolansky and Lance Alvers, probably to make them easier for children to pronounce. Alias that the comics Avalanche has used include Dominic Janos Petros, Jon Bloom, Dominic Szilard, and Nick.

- Avalanche enjoys gardening and establishes a bar under the name "Nick" to get away from his life of crime.

- One of the Red Skull's S-Men claims to be Avalanche's daughter. Her name is Dancing Water and she's basically a woman made of water who has squid tentacles for legs. She can reshape her body at all, spray blasts of water from her hands, control any nearby water, and teleport via water. As far as I know, it's unknown if her claims of being his daughter are true, who her mother is, what her history is, and why she wants to help the Red Skull destroy mutants.

- Fred "Blob" Dukes is fat because of his mutation, and the X-Men make fun of his weight ALL THE TIME. Making fun of someone for being fat is pretty bad, but there are some X-Men for whom I can still see it as in-character, they're not all the nicest people. But making fun of someone for how their physical mutation effects them? I'd think they'd ALL know better than that. If it's not okay to do to Nightcrawler, it's not ok to do to Blob!

- Blob eating a lot is frequently a gag too and haha I get it, fat people are gluttons, real nice Marvel. Besides that being a cruel stereotype in a series supposed to be a statement AGAINST bigotry, let's go back to the fact that THIS IS BLOB'S MUTATION. He is going to be this size no matter what. And a bigger person or animal needs MORE CALORIES. That's why a bear eats more than a chihuahua! He is eating a lot because guess what, he would probably DIE if he did not, it's basic biology, but it's made into a joke at his expense by the narrative itself. It's so messed up.

- Blob has a super duper best friendship with Unus the Untouchable, they are mega bros and it is so sweet and it is made even sweeter by the fact that Blob is frankly a HUGE JERK (no pun intended) to everyone else. But Unus is his BFF!! Read more about their Brotp HERE!

- Lesser known female Brotherhood members: Lorelei, Phantazia, Mastermind (Martinique Jason), and Astra. When Magneto abandoned his second Brotherhood and they became the Resistants instead, a woman named Mist Mistress joined them, and Spiral joined Mystique's Brotherhood when they became Freedom Force. The more well-known female Brotherhood members are, of course, Mystique, Destiny, Rogue, and the Scarlet Witch. See a post on Lorelei HERE and on Phantazia’s tag HERE for more about these ladies!

- While Mystique has consistently been portrayed as Magneto's subordinate in the movies, this has NEVER been the case in the comics. In fact, they have never even worked together until VERY recently. In the comics, they both led different Brotherhoods, and Mystique was the LEADER of hers, not anyone's second-in-command. In fact, up until recently, she and Magneto barely even crossed paths; the only time I'm aware of them even meeting was in the 1980s when she arrested him at a Holocaust memorial (this was when she and her Brotherhood were working for the government as "Freedom Force" in return for being pardoned for their crimes) So, needless to say, they do NOT have the same relationship depicted in the movies! Currently, they're both X-men and serving on the same team. Yeah, weird.

-Sabretooth is on the same X-Men team that Mystique and Magneto are, but contrary to the first X-Men film, I don't think he's ever been a Brotherhood member. I could be wrong though. But considering Sabes led the massacre of the Morlocks, I have a hunch not...by the way, Riptide was part of that too, he's sure as hell not a Brotherhood guy in the comics. Magneto HATES the Marauders!

- Ah, ok, I checked TV tropes on Sabes: "Something of an associate to Mystique's Brotherhood, as he was never affiliated with the team's present-day incarnation, but was shown in a flashback as joining up with an earlier iteration, even declaring himself their leader before being betrayed and handed over to the authorities by Mystique the next morning. He also worked for Exodus's Brotherhood, and is usually affiliated with the Brotherhood in adaptations."

-As mentioned, Mystique was NEVER  subordinate to Magneto, she led her own independent Brotherhood as LEADER...and at her side was Destiny, aka Irene Adler. Implied to be the woman who inspired the Sherlock Holmes character of the same name (with the equal implication Mystique inspired Sherlock himself...hey, she's Raven DarkHOLME) Destiny was a blind mutant who could see visions of the future. She was also Mystique's lover. Yup. They could not be explicitly referred to as such during the 1980s due to the Comics Code, but Claremont did everything he could to convey to the readers they were couple. They lived together, were affectionate with each other, and even raised a child together...none other than Rogue of the X-Men! In fact, his original plan was that Destiny would be Nightcrawler's mother and Mystique would be his FATHER, having impregnated Destiny in male form, but of course Marvel wouldn't let him get away with that. He also managed to sneakily slide in characters referring to Destiny as "Mystique's leman"---an antiquated word for "lover" obscure enough to slip by editors.

It used to be a common trope in media to use same-sex desires and relationships for villains as a way to emphasize their wickedness. For instance, a movie would never allow a hero to do such a thing, but it could be suggested with villains because it cast homosexuality in a negative light, as something bad people do to show how bad they are, like showing them kicking puppies. Claremont, however, went the opposite route. He used Mystique's tenderness with Destiny to humanize her instead, using their relationship to show a capacity for goodness in Mystique rather than play up how evil she was. They were depicted as loving and normal together, not depraved and decadent and bizarre. They were downright domestic.

While Claremont did have a notable fascination with lesbians, as shown by his use of sexy evil women who would pursue young heroines with a thinly-veiled subtext of sexual creepiness, he didn't fetishize Mystique and Destiny at all. He could have made Destiny a hot leather-clad young dominatrix like Selene or Emma Frost, but she's actually an elderly woman. Neither she nor her relationship with Mystique are ever sexualized. There are some f/f scenes in the X-Men series where you can imagine Claremont wrote it with one hand, but there's never anything like that between these two. Speaking of Destiny being old, she and Mystique were together FOR LIFE. They met during the 1800s when Destiny was much younger, and while they do seem to have had sexual relationships with men during their time together (as evident by both of them having children and grandchildren) their true loves were always each other. Destiny aged slower than an average person, but she did get old, and yet Mystique still stayed with her even though she remained young and I just love them so much. Destiny eventually met her end not by old age, but at the hands of Legion, Xavier's son.

Also, sorry to turn this into a personal soapbox but I have to here: Tumblr is all about "uwu LGBT representation uwuuu" but don't actually give a fuck about an actual canon woman/woman couple, even though tumblr's X-fandom collectively threw a fucking SHITFIT over Cherik not being made canon in DOFP and each of them having a girlfriend/wife and it being the worst most homophobic thing ever and the women in question getting bashed despite them being involved with these same women in canon...but Azazel gets to totally replace Destiny, who is nowhere to be seen in the movies, and fandom doesn't make a PEEP. Fandom is cool with that. In fact, they love Azazel and love drawing him in a happy heteronormative family with Mystique. Tumblr likes to be “uwu support LGBT representation uwuuu” but they give absolutely no fucks about Mystique's bisexuality and Destiny's very existence being erased. I've seen so much fucking Azazel/Mystique/Kurt fanart, but I don't even see much of Destiny even in COMICS fanart.

I get that it's an AU, it's not the comics, but it just leaves such a bad taste of hypocrisy in my mouth considering how tumblr X-fandom AS A WHOLE flipped out about Erik and Charles having relationships with Magda and Moira instead of each other in DOFP , even though they had relationships with those women in canon and, despite all subtext, have never been confirmed as a canon same-sex couple like Mystique and Destiny have. But people were ready to go to WAR for them. But two women who are a CONFIRMED CANON QUEER COUPLE? Who cares, right? Seriously, if it's not hot young cis white men, NO ONE CARES, even when it's a case of a REAL CONFIRMED CANON queer character (two, in fact!) being erased in the films. They had a lifelong relationship together, they raised a child together, they have all these affectionate moments...there is so much Mystique and Destiny stuff in canon, and Claremont WANTED to put in more and wasn't allowed.

And now that we're in a time period where that could be allowed, I think it's a fucking TRAVESTY that this wasn't put in the movies to make up for what wasn't let into the comics, to finally let them be “out” while Destiny was still alive. But it's even bigger travesty to me that tumblr not only ignores this, it endorses the heterosexual ship that replaces it, and then pats itself on the back for being “progressive” when it comes to shipping two DUDES (especially if they can shit on women in the process---there was a LOT of bashing Moira and Magda both in fandom when DOFP came out). Seriously, I swear the reason some people are into slash is just because there's not any EW GROSS GIRLS in it.

Sorry I had to get salty but this really bothers me. Mystique's bisexual and had a lifelong relationship with another woman in which they raised a child together and the movies not only erase that, movie fandom just accepts it while patting themselves on the back about being progressive because they have fanon m/m ships.

[duaneodavila]

Matt Damon’s Risk and Rebuke

No, he didn’t rape anyone. He didn’t even grope anyone, as far as I can tell. His involvement with Sarah Silverman was entirely consensual, at least as far as she was concerned. Jimmy Kimmel? Who cares. He’s privileged. And he is a true believer in doing good for others.

Damon offered some advice to MIT’s 2016 graduating class: “The world wants to hear your ideas — good and bad. But today’s not the day you switch from ‘receive’ to ‘transmit.’ Once you do that, your education is over. And your education should never be over. Even outside your work, there are ways to keep challenging yourself. … Whatever you do, just keep listening. Even to people you don’t agree with at all.”

As the graduates go out to tackle the world’s problems, he said, “There are potentially trillions of human beings who will someday exist whose fate, in large part, depends on the choices you make … on your ideas … on your grit and persistence and willingness to engage.”

He seemed nice. He’s clearly dedicated to the welfare of others. So what could he do that’s so horrifying that he would be burned at the stake?

“You know, there’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?” he told Peter Travers of ABC. “Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?”

Okay, so he’s not really a math wiz, and this isn’t exactly an epiphany. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t an outrage.

Those comments were met with anger and frustration online, where many women, including the actress Alyssa Milano, rejected attempts to categorize various forms of sexual misconduct.

“They all hurt,” Ms. Milano wrote on Twitter on Friday. “And they are all connected to a patriarchy intertwined with normalized, accepted — even welcomed — misogyny.”

Yes, Milano, the adorable little girl from Who’s the Boss?, where Tony Danza played the maid. She, along with the other TV giant, George Takei, whose own allegations of sexual impropriety miraculously disappeared, are leading voices of social justice intellectuals. Then again, since Matt Damon is an actor, it’s only fair that he be subject to the scrutiny of his colleagues.

That groundswell of testimony that has empowered women to speak publicly about sexual harassment and abuse is posing challenges about how best to have a national conversation about a subject that previously lingered in the shadows.

That paragraph, however, doesn’t come from Milano. That was written by New York Times reporter Christina Caron, who apparently fails to distinguish her role as a reporter from regurgitating the advocate’s ideology. More to the point, her irony meter is broken when she writes “how best to have a national conversation” in the same article where Matt Damon is castigated for suggesting that “patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation” aren’t the same thing. “Right?”

“None of us came here perfect,” he said. “What’s the point of us being here other than to improve?”

Ms. Milano responded: “We are in a ‘culture of outrage’ because the magnitude of rage is, in fact, overtly outrageous. And it is righteous.”

Would this be a good time for a “not the Onion” joke? Or should that wait until after Damon’s former girlfriend, Minnie Driver, gets in a punch?

God God, SERIOUSLY? https://t.co/NDZFrLDXil

— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) December 15, 2017

But she had more to say about Damon having less to say.

In an interview with The Guardian on Saturday, Ms. Driver said men “simply cannot understand what abuse is like on a daily level.”

“I honestly think that until we get on the same page, you can’t tell a woman about their abuse,” she said. “A man cannot do that. No one can. It is so individual and so personal, it’s galling when a powerful man steps up and starts dictating the terms, whether he intends it or not.”

This theme, that “good men” will remain silent, except for the occasional “hallelujah” after a woman gives testimony, is an article of faith. The oppressor doesn’t get to tell the oppressed what they think.

So does this squabbling matter to anyone outside of the Hollywood elite? It does, even if it doesn’t rise to the nosebleed heights of the New York Times’ attention. It has become the force behind the woke lawyer scolds swarming on their colleagues who espouse entirely reasonable views, as did Matt Damon.

The old “we need to have a conversation” trope, provided you shut the fuck up you sexist shitlord,” is pervasive among some of the least accomplished, yet most strident, intellectual gnats o the law. No one would care but for the fact that they convey the impression to lawyers new to social media that this is a place no rational person would want to be. Who needs to put up with these delusional nutjobs?

The other day, Ta-Nahesi Coates left twitter. His account is gone.

You don’t have to like him or agree with him, but if you are even a tiny bit honest, you must acknowledge that his is a voice of significance. And was pushed to quit. But it’s mentioned here not just because a valuable voice was lost because of the swarm of social justice, but because of the reaction to coates’ decision.

  Extensive list of #blackwomen writers with similar (and even better) critiques of @tanehisicoates as @CornelWest. However, these #scholars and #activists aren’t getting the same attention as #CornelWest. Problematic because #womenalsoknowstuff. https://t.co/hzRYDuffla

— Kelebogile Zvobgo (@kelly_zvobgo) December 19, 2017

The complaint wasn’t the loss of Coates’ voice, but that his decision to quit came after he was attacked by Cornel West, rather than after attacks by a list of women. The complaint was that his quitting was sexist because he didn’t quit until a man attacked him.

What does Matt Damon have to say about that?

Copyright © 2007-2017 Simple Justice NY, LLC This feed is for personal, non-commercial and Newstex use only. The use of this feed anywhere else violates copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it means the page you are viewing infringes copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 51981395c77d7762065ca2c084b63e47) Matt Damon’s Risk and Rebuke republished via Simple Justice

[ultraericthered]

Was earlier browsing the TV Tropes Ass Pull / Dragon Ball page for the most notable examples of total Ass Pull swerves seen across the Dragon Ball franchise, and I was curious in what was considered examples of such from out of the late Akira Toriyama's writing for the original Dragon Ball manga, back when he was young and in his prime. Among the handful of moments detailed on the page, there are some I agree to be unjustified, clumsily written and poorly implemented Ass Pulls (most notably all examples from the Majin Buu Saga) but a few where I honestly disagree and believe the ideas and the writing for them was sharper, more solid and sufficiently justified within the work than the TV Tropers gave them credit for.

To cover them all and relieve the best and worst of Toriyama:

King Piccolo hits Goku hard enough to stop his heartbeat. but it starts beating again after Piccolo's gone - NO. I think what people really take offense to here is the timing of it, that Piccolo leaves Goku for dead and then his heart just so happens to resume beating after he's departed from the scene. That is silly and contrived as heck. But the event itself is sensible considering that Piccolo assumed this moment of caridac arrest to have killed Goku because no human, no matter how strong and good at martial arts, could live through that. But Goku isn't human. Even this very saga stresses something is very superhuman and otherworldly about Goku, including why he had a tail and could transform into a giant ape. Piccolo had no knowledge of the Saiyans and how they're strong enough to recover from near death experiences and come back stronger than ever, so he had no way of knowing that "killing" Goku like that might not stick for long.

The Ultra Divine Water - YES. That was weird. It is indeed a direct contradiction to the previous arc at Korin's Tower and if such a thing had always existed, it would've been nice for Korin to have hinted at it back when we last saw him even if he didn't want Goku to have it.

Nail merges his life energy with Piccolo - NO. There'd been nothing saying that warrior class Namekians of the same type as Piccolo could do this before, but there'd also been nothing saying that they couldn't. What's important to remember is that this isn't a case like Kami and Piccolo re-merging, where two halves become one whole Namekian again: Nail was beaten to within an inch of his life and could've died out there with all the power still within him going to waste, but since Piccolo came along and needed the extra strength to go toe to toe with Freeza, Nail decided to let Piccolo essentially mercy kill him by absorbing his life energy and ki into himself.

Vegeta can suddenly detect power without a scouter after his fight on Earth - NO. The only thing that makes this seen nonsensical is a line in the Japanese version about him being able to awaken and attain this ability because "he's a Saiyan", even though it's an ability that has been used by non-Saiyans all the way back to Mr. Popo. In context, it still makes sense that Vegeta unlocked the potential to do this when in battle against opponents who could do so, similar to how he learned to conceal his full power level from scouters at the same time. In fact, it actually first kicked in for Vegeta during that battle on Earth, as towards the end he could sense that his enemies were all "barely clinging to life" without even having to go near them.

The Zenaki Boost - NO. I think it's misrepresented in that entry. It claims that Vegeta's minor boost in power after a genuinely near fatal beatdown from Zarbon doesn't mesh with him later not being nearly as beaten down by Recoome yet recieving another boost that puts him on par with First Form Freeza from it...but why, seeing as it only made him stronger than Jeice and Ginyu? Being now able to match Freeza in his first form isn't the same as "surpassing Freeza in his first form", so it's not too extreme a boost. It then says Goku was only "somewhat stronger than Ginyu" after the Vegeta battle, recovery, and constant training on the spaceship, but after being healed from his body getting roughed up thanks to Ginyu, he's able to match Freeza at 50% of his total power, strong enough to not risk his life via Kaio-Ken x10 and even able to pull off a Kaio-Ken x20, and that is somehow makes no sense...but that boost he got that allowed him to be somewhat stronger than Ginyu was talked up in-story as being the breakthrough that put Goku towards becoming a Super Saiyan, so why is any of this in any way a surprising, unforseen and unwarranted development? It also falsely states that "keep in mind, Freeza's second form outmatched Piccolo, who was ten times stronger than Ginyu had been", but it was Freeza's third form that outmatched Piccolo: in his second form, Freeza thought he could outmatch Piccolo but Piccolo was wearing his weighted clothing throughout the fight and showed that without it, he was an exact match in strength, speed, stamina, and full Ki power for Freeza in that form. It goes on to say that the idea almost entirely disappears after the Namek Saga since Vegeta doesn't simply try to fight Android 18 after his beatdown at her hands nor does Goku try to enter the fight rather than do more training after he recovers from his virus, but this plainly neglects details of how that story actually went down - Vegeta didn't commit to training to ascend beyond a Super Saiyan until after he learned both that Cell existed and that Piccolo now surpassed him, and Goku knew there was a greater threat when he recovered so he felt the boost on its own wouldn't be enough for it.

Additionally, I know one could nitpick that the Zenkai Boost existing renders previous training and comebacks by Goku pointless. Like what was the purpose of Goku scaling Korin's Tower and fighting to take the water from Korin when he could've just fought Tao again with the boost he got? What was the purpose of Goku having to attain the Ultra Divine Water if he could've just fought Piccolo again with the boost he got? Why train with Mr. Popo when he could've just looked for a way to nearly kill himself in order to get strong enough to fight Piccolo Jr.? Why did he need to run down Snake Way and get to King Kai's world to train under King Kai? OK, for those first three, Goku nor any of the other characters knew what a Saiyan was, that Goku was one, and that the Zenkai Boost was a thing for Saiyans. And simply getting the Zenkai Boost is in of itself not enough to truly improve a Saiyan's full inner strength and mastery over their new boosted power. Vegeta is the only one who's ever assumed that it is because he's an high class elite warrior to whom strides in the buildup and enhancement of his own power comes naturally to him and he arrogantly assumes that this is enough to ultimately ascend him to the level of Super Saiyan. Goku has never believed that - he's always put in the work to bring out and gain full skillful control over the new power he surpasses previous limits in order to attain. The training doesn't substitute for the boost, it works in concurrence with it and enhances it. Vegeta and even Freeza learn from example.

Freeza says five minutes until Namek explodes, yet the fight goes on for much longer - YES. Freeza was foolish and cannot tell time.

The Hyperbolic Time Chamber - YES. The existence of the Time Chamber isn't an Ass Pull itself, but the idea that young Goku was able to train in it and withstand its gravity yet later had trouble with the gravity on King Kai's world, and the fact that none of the fighters who were training right there at Kami's Lookout were told to or ever thought to use it for the coming fight against Nappa and Vegeta, are definite plot holes that Toriyama had no good excuse for.

The Cell Juniors - KIND OF? I think the idea is that since Cell has Namekian cells in him from Piccolo and Saiyan cells in him including those of Vegeta and Nappa, he had both the egg-making ability of King Piccolo and the memory of how to plant and grow Saibamen, but given his unique bio-organic body structure, he's able to make the seeds/eggs for such creatures inside of him and they grow once he spits them out onto planetary soil. And they come out in his own image since they inherited energy from the cells that make them. However, since he never explicity states this, it is sort of bizarre.

Cell's return as Super Perfect Cell after self-destructing- KIND OF? Two parts of it were feasible, at least: Cell returning to his Perfect Form even without 18 inside of him was due to him rettaining the memory of that form in tandem with the huge boost in power he got from the power of Super Saiyan 2 Gohan he'd been put on the recieving end of but now awakened within his cells. It's said that "he'd been beaten up several times and never once got a boost from it" until this near-death experience... didn't he, though? None of his previous beatdowns were near severe enough for him to get such a boost, and in the two where he did get outmatched in raw strength and/or Ki control power (against Future Trunks and against Goku), he did quickly rebound with a boost in strength, speed, and technique. And as for him learning the Instant Transmission, while Cell had seen Goku use it multiple times without learning it, it was made a point of that Cell was increasing his speed via watching Goku's, including the Instant Transmission, and as the page states "the only noteworthy difference is that Cell was taken along for the ride that time". Yes, Goku literally had his other hand on Cell the entire time as he blew up while he used Instant Transmission. Cell can emulate the strength of those whose cells he shares, almost as though absorbing some of their Ki power into himself. What else was going to happen there should Cell happen to live through his self destruction?

The one part that's an Ass Pull and plot hole of epic proportions is that Cell was able to regenerate from near-total annihilation into next to nothing to back whole, in his Perfect form, at the peak of his Ki power even after all that he'd expended in the earlier fight because, as he explains, "he can survive anything so long as the nucleus located in his head stays in-tact." Which directly contradicts the earlier part in his fight with Goku where Goku disintegrated his head with a point-blank Kamehameha, and Cell regenerated his upper torso and head like it was nothing. The original English dub for the anime actually gave a better excuse, that so long as so much as a single cell within his core nucleus survives, he's unkillable and can come back from anything. So even if Goku had blown up the nucleus along with Cell's head, if a single cell leaked through Cell's body in-tact, he could come back from it. And even if his entire body blew up, if the remaining nucleus still contained a single cell, he'd respawn. It's only through Gohan's final blast that Cell's nucleus and every single cell derived from it gets completely obliterated, which kills Cell.

Gotenks and Trunks become Child Super Saiyans - YES. I've harped on this one before as being one of the earliest downfalls in the Buu Saga. Nothing against Goten and Trunks or Gotenks for that matter, but how Super Saiyan power-ups got handled in regards to their characters was cheap, diminishing, and inexcusable of Toriyama.

Piccolo regenerates his whole body after it got broken because his head still remained. - YES. Didn't Piccolo get killed by Nappa with his entire body in-tact? Weren't there earlier risks of Piccolo dying by Freeza and Cell shooting him through the heart? Well, the heart is located in the part of Piccolo's body that got accidentally shattered by Goten and Trunks when he was turned to stone, yet he can now just live through that because the head is where regeneration starts for him? Where did this come from? Why was this gag even needed?

Super Saiyan 3 - YES. The concept of the form less so than the way it got implemented in a nebulous and downright contradictory way. Earlier in the saga when Goku is asked to kill Buu, he says point-blank that at his current power level he could only equal Vegeta but there's no way he could take on and kill the likes of Buu...only for him to then reveal he attained Super Saiyan 3 in the afterlife, meaning he was actually far stronger than Vegeta and was holding back on him during the Majin Vegeta fight, and that he absolutely could take on and possibly even kill Buu. And then there's no given reason for why he doesn't kill Buu in this form, much less use it ever again against the stronger, more evil Buus later on in the saga. And to top this off, Gotenks is able to skip Super Saiyan 2 and reach this form even when in the manga he had know way of even knowing about it let alone how to attain it, which is when the saga, and with it the entire original DB series, jumped the shark even before the death knell of Gohan getting outfought by Buu and absorbed by him.

That along with....

Buu's scream breaks open the sealed off Hyperbolic Time Chamber - YES. And what's annoying about this one is that it could've worked easily and raised no eyebrows - there's a full panel of Buu all tensed up and roaring in fury over it, so the idea that Buu released all of his pent up power into the roar and it creates a small crack in the fabric of the chamber dimension that's small enough for only Buu to access by turning into his liquid form and seeping through it, would work perfectly. But instead, after the initial roar, Buu screams about how "IT'S NOT FAIR!" and THAT is what unleashes the power that blows through the chamber and creates a hole for him to escape through, and the anime makes this longer and even more dumbfounding. This was Toriyama writing himself into a corner for the sake of some dumb humor and not knowing how to immediately write himself out of it in a way that could bring Buu back out as a threat but still inhibit the good guys so that there's any semblence of remaining tension.

Vegito defuses back into Goku and Vegeta inside of Buu despite the fusion having been said to be permanent - YES. It's not explained why it happens just because Vegito's been eaten by Buu, it doesn't make sense, but then again nothing about the Potara earrings and the fusion they bring about ever made sense, and its setup only gets more contradicted the more the earrings get used as a device in later franchise entries. I don't care that a movie beat Toriyama to showing Goku and Vegeta fuse via the fusion dance, he didn't let the fourth movie's "False Super Saiyan" stop him from debuting the real Super Saiyan form he'd envisoned, so why let Movie Gogeta stop him from debuting Real Gogeta. Given that he would years later do exactly that in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, I think even he regrets not doing so. When you introduce the concept of fusion into a saga along with an exact method for achieving it, stick to that method and those rules!

[ultraericthered]

I didn’t think TV Tropes could completely eviscerate one of their classic tropes more than Complete Monster, but they’re now doing the exact same damn thing to Magnificent Bastard, trying to make the trope more objective by revising and redefining the criteria for qualifying so that fewer characters will pass as legit examples and many who were considered to be quintessential examples of the trope for years since the Wiki’s conception get removed.

So the Magnificent Bastard trope pages were purged of their examples, those examples were removed from their works’ YMMV pages, and there are bound to be some previously agreed upon examples who will never get back on the trope. Notable victims of this purge are:

Lelouch Vi Britannia

Light Yagami (yes, Mr. “Exactly As Planned” himself got cut ‘cuz ppl hate him.)

Gendo Ikari

Bill Cipher

Professor Pericles

Axel and all other Kingdom Hearts examples

The Joker (Just about all versions of him!)

Littlefinger and all other Game Of Thrones examples

Rumpelstiltskin and all other Once Upon A Time examples

Sheev Palpatine/Darth Sidious

XANA

Yami Bakura

Myotismon and all other Digimon examples

Cell and all other Dragon Ball examples

Yuno Gasai

Sosuke Aizen

The Major

All When They Cry examples

Lysandre

Lusamine

Izaya Orihara

Junko Enoshima

Rosemary Applefield

Spike

Rick Sanchez

Megabyte

Megatron

Discord and all other My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic examples

Prince Lotor

Nerissa

And most hilariously of all, Lionel Luthor, the fucking Trope Confider!

Among many more. Now some of them could go back onto the trope once they’ve been “approved of” as examples and given proper “writeups”, but a good many of the old iconic Magnificent Bastards will not (we’re likely not ever seeing Light, Lelouch, Bill Cipher, or Littlefinger on there again for example) all because the TV Tropers are for some reason dead set on demolishing a long-standing trope and replacing it with a sanitized, more exclusive, more self-important version of it’s former self that’s overly bogged down by arbitrary and needlessly specific criteria for qualifying. The Magnificent Bastard can now no longer be TOO off-the-scales magnificent or TOO much of a bastard. Kind of derails the whole point, eh?

Thankfully I think the internet has moved beyond the point where it holds TV Tropes in the highest regard. Even so, I feel more people ought to know about and sign up to All The Tropes, the alternative tropes Wiki that still features the original defining and examples of Magnificent Bastard. If anyone is interested, please become contributors and editors there.. 

[ultraericthered]

Ghetsis once again listed as a Complete Monster on TV Tropes in honor of his return.

These are not actual published edits, but man wouldn’t it be nice if they were?

[ultraericthered]

I wanted to reply to your comment from F*** No TV Tropes, but I don't have a Tumblr, so forgive me for sending an ask, but: "Between this and Scar from “The Lion King” getting reconsidered, I’ve hope that Ghetsis and Turbo’s day might come.)" Are you saying that they should be considered Complete Monsters or are you saying they're not and are expecting them to be listed due to how the tropes is handled poorly?

They SHOULD be considered Complete Monsters - they hit all the basic criteria. The trope being handled poorly is the reason they got cut from it in the first place, because they supposedly “aren’t heinous enough” to be examples.