How subjective is Magnificent Bastard?

(Note: I was considering asking the MB thread about this, but I feel that it may be drowned out by votes or may be subject to biased answers, and that I may be biased, too, given that I disagreed with a few entries.)

Magnificent Bastard is listed under YMMV, and its description talks about these smart, villainous characters charming audiences. However, I have noticed quite a few things:

• Laconic.Magnificent Bastard mostly deals with the objective bits: confidence, in-universe charm, scheming, and quick-thinking. The only thing that could be subjective here is grace, but that could easily be objective, too.

• It's not just the laconic, either. A vast majority of the examples also seem to deal with facts about the characters; what they do and how they do it. Rarely do I see notes on how the audience reacted, and if I do, it tends to be a single sentence at the end.

• Then there's the thread itself; the pinned post states that MBs are intelligent, cruel (but not too cruel), quick-thinking, and have a friendly social relation with someone. All of these can be described with objective tropes, especially given that a majority of Morality Tropes and Evil Tropes are objective.

All in all, if there is an actual YMMV angle to consider about the trope, then it feels like I, alongside a lot of others, are missing it.

The reason it's subjective is that, in practice, people cannot agree on which characters qualify. Complete Monster also should be objective, but experience has shown that this does not work.

Charm is hardly objective. We recently had a vote on Adam the Clown from Dead Rising and were split based on if his Laughing Mad nature makes him more or less charming. What may seem cool or stylish to one may not to another.

There’s a lot of objective criteria to it, yes, but also a good deal of criteria that people can disagree on.

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on May 28th 2022 at 11:07:56 AM