Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46513
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

Original score: 3