How is this not YMMV?: Jerkass

No seriously, what is objective about someone being mean? How is that not an Audience Reaction?

Err...how is someone being a jerk not objective?

@OP: You'll have to do better than that. A character being mean to other characters is very evident in the story.

edited 8th Jun '11 11:43:35 AM by Fighteer

We do have the page Jerkass Dissonance, though that's not necessarily the same thing as the OP is saying.

I think what he is saying is that although there are definite things that most agree are mean, such as beating someone for no reason, there are definite grays that depend upon the person. For instance, name calling. Some think it is mean, others think it is petty.

Add to this the many shades of morality which exist (especially Blue-and-Orange Morality), and I can see justification for calling it a subjective trope.

How, then, would Hero and Villain not be subjective?

When characters within a story responds to a character behaving a certain way, that is not YMMV. A Jerkass is someone recognized as a jerk in the story. There are a lot of tropes that should be so simple, but due to troper trends we can't seem to tell the difference between character reactions and audience reaction (Both Moral Event Horizon and Big-Lipped Alligator Moment should be objective, but that's why we can't have nice things).

Stale thread: never got a compelling argument to gainsay the initial repudiation of the one-line OP. Characters being mean to other characters can appear unambiguously within a work. Locking.