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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46426
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

Original score: 14