What are some bad ways to subvert tropes?

There have been a lot of good answers so far. I think a few areas have been missed. So, on top of the other answers, I would add:

As Social Commentary:

Since tropes represent, in a small way, our expectations, subverting a trope can be used to put social norms in stark relief. The Star Trek episode "Let this be your Last Battlefield," featured the struggle between the only two surviving members of an entire planet engulfed in war. The reason for the conflict, when it is revealed, served to put the racial struggles of 1960's USA in a very different frame.

If this context, the dynamics of the societal property need to be preserved when the trope is subverted. Like an abusive-parent trope could be subverted to reflect abuse by excessive permissiveness rather than cruelty. But, if that was a synecdoche for a socialist government -- promising everything to everybody -- it would be challenging to make work. But, the original trope makes a good synecdoche for a totalitarian government.

As Misdirection:

If a story can seemingly rely on a trope, without clearly declaring it, then the sudden subversion can permit the story to unfold in new directions. This requires that the text of the story implies conformance with the trope, so the reader adopts it as part of their internal model of the world. Then, when it is important, the real mechanics can be revealed and the reader sees how their assumptions led to their own surprise. The 6th Sense is an example of this type of subversion of a trope.

But, if the story contains details that are dependent on the original trope, then the contract with the reader is broken and the work can feel badly done.

posted over 5 years ago

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EDL‭

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If you're just doing it for its own sake to bask in your own 'cleverness', it stands out like neon in a windowless room (see: The recent fallout regarding the ever-'subversive' Season 8 of Game of Thrones). Intent is a lot more transparent than people think.

If you're subverting tropes to discuss said trope, or simply because that's the story you want to tell, that will bleed through too, and come off as much better. The former example is what has a lot of post-modern artsy points.

Subverting for its own sake amounts to 'look, here's the thing that people usually do, and BAM! Now it's the other way around!'.

Subverting to discuss, however, would go more like this: 'Look, here's the thing that people usually do, but why do we usually do that? It doesn't always make sense, and especially not in the universe I'm writing. Instead, this other thing will happen.'

The difference is palpable in how it's executed.

posted over 5 years ago

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Matthew Dave‭

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One very bad way of subverting a trope is thinking you're being clever and subverting a trope only it's Dead Horse Trope and no one actually uses it straight any more. For instance, there have been instances of non-genre writers trying their hand at a genre and think they're being innovative and daring and subverting all sorts of tropes, only the tropes they've subverting aren't in use in that genre and haven't been for decades. The writer, essentially, is basing their "innovation and daring" on something they remember seeing (or worse, hearing about) decades ago which they think is an essential part of the genre, but isn't actually a thing now days.

Simplistic example: suppose an author want to try their hand at science fiction, but they only thing they remember is that the heroes were squared-jawed men of action who rescued the damsel in distress from the aliens who'd taken her for...some reason. Well, this author is going to bust the genre wide open; his hero is going to be a woman! Someone just as good in a fight and with a blaster as a man, and better then most. And, to add on to it, there will be space marines, and some of them will be women too!

Okay, sure, daring and subverting tropes...seventy years ago. I've spent literally decades with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner and Honor Harrington and any other number of badass women in genre fiction. I've seen the Adepta Sororitas fight on thousands of worlds, Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper running around the solar system, Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr running around the galaxy, and so on and so forth. In other words, the idea of Badass Action Girl isn't something new or novel in the least any more, so someone writing as if it's a new and exciting idea is almost guaranteed to suffer an epic fail.

That's probably the most common way for a trope subversion to go bad; not knowing that subverting the trope is pretty much the only time the trope even shows up at all any more.

posted over 5 years ago

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Keith Morrison‭

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There's a danger with subverting tropes, in that you can end up giving misleading promises ... e.g. your story seems to be a romcom for the first 20 pages but then !surprise! it's a horror--well, all the people who wanted horror have not even started the story (they thought it was a romcom), and the people who started it because they wanted a romcom are now terribly dissapointed (they didn't want a horror story) ... that's a very coarse example; you can get the same kind of problem even with much more fine-grained trope-vs-subversion attempts

posted over 5 years ago

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sesquipedalias‭

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I think the problem with the blue-pink subversion is that there is no clear reason why; other than the intent to surprise the reader. And secondly, it is not clear this trope subversion has any actual story consequences.

Normally, trope inversions have at least some rational reason for existing. e.g. Wonder Woman is one of the first female super-heroes (appearing 1941), but rationales are offered for subverting the 1941 tropes about women: She comes from an all-female society, so their military and defense are necessarily all female. Likewise she can be unafraid to fight, blunt and aggressive and take charge: In our society traits associated with males, but in an all-female society without gender-based roles, it would be necessary for some females to take on the roles of generals and soldiers, and there would be no stigma associated with it.

Trope inversions are generally justified in fiction, in some way. The character acts against type out of necessity, or out of upbringing or life experiences that taught them some non-typical lesson. The nerd can fight because his father made him learn to fight. The woman knows sports because her father was a coach and fanatic, and loved her, and naturally she bonded with him over the sports he watched all the time, and grew up liking them and understanding them.

One bad subversion of a trope is to declare an opposite and provide zero reasoning for it. That looks too obviously like a contrived surprise.

A second bad subversion of a trope is when it has no actual story consequences of any kind. We need our female protagonist to have a lot of sports knowledge for a story reason; perhaps this lets her solve a puzzle or understand a reference other people would miss.

Now of course, the reasons we give for a trope inversion are themselves contrived, but that second-level contrivance doesn't matter much. Or you could bury it in a third-level contrivance: Wonder Woman comes from an all-female society. But why is it all-female? If we get into reasons for that, we have a third-level contrivance, and by burying it this makes it all more plausible (since the "all-female society" sounds a little implausible).

But often just the 2nd level contrivance is sufficient, if it sounds plausible -- A father that is a sports fanatic is in keeping with a trope, with a daughter as his only child it is plausible she grows up loving sports herself, going to games, and understanding the games because in her world that is what fathers and daughters do.

Added from comments: In fiction any extreme ability (for either gender) stands out and readers expect it to matter, somehow. Failing to meet this expectation disappoints them. Fiction is not real life! To readers extreme abilities mean something, that is the psychology of reading stories. If we read that a character has superpowers, but by the end of the book has never done anything with 'em, Then why did the author give them superpowers?

Trope inversions are very similar to this; if you subvert the trope you are creating an outlier, an abnormality, something the reader does not expect and does not regard as "normal". It generally needs to be justified, and then also needs to influence the story, and the more unusual the abnormality the more influence it should have in the story.

posted over 5 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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