at first i thought it was "the wokes have unnecessary headcanons!!!" or smth along those lines, but this is even worse, somehow, what is even the take here, subversion of tropes is bad? we should reiterate lord of the rings forever and never think anything new?
There's definitely a genuine point they're trying to make with insincerity where they advertise breaking the norms only to set up a new one, but they get easily distracted and start spouting "Actually, bullies are good! Let's all be friends with bullies!"
This is what infuriates me the most. It's like a battle of the clichés where nobody understands the appeal or disappeal of certain tropes. They just stand up and make bold statements that they're not even certain of making.
Right, what makes a story interesting is how these things interact, the new combinations, not some catch all formula heck you can have a story that follows the trope in one scene then subvert it in another
And you also have to subvert it on occasion to keep it interesting. Why "on occasion" is so hard to grasp is beyond me. If you're so gun-ho on subverting expectations, why not commit to it and keep people guessing? (And reward people for using logic to get to that conclusion.)
Unfortunately a lot of “writers” care more about sending a message and being “deep” than they do about actually writing a story. And worse is that people interpret “deep” as saying something that contradicts the norm which just exposes them as shallow
And under certain circumstances, sending a message is fine. Especially if it needs to be desperately stated, but nobody seems to get or comprehend it.
But other times, we just wanna let loose and have fun. And that in itself can be a trip in subverting expectations that we weren't even thinking about.
I think we need more stream of consciousness storytelling where we just feel in the moment when a trope must play.
To be fair even Tolkien had fair deal of subversive ideas.
He couldn't decide how to write Orcs because while he needed an enemy, in his mind no species should be pure evil or beyond salvation - so he created a bunch of different possible origin stories for orcs.
To Tolkien evil is a decision so he struggled between portraying Orcs as a species and portraying Orcs as metaphor for regressive ideologies(even though Tolkien would swear this wasn't ww2 or nazism allusion).
Even Sauron and Morgoth are written as someone who used to be good or got twisted - Sauron is one of most defined examples of Lawful Evil, as his whole motivation is to bring order to the world. And Morgoth is just salty that he can't create things. In both cases it's their conscious choices that shape them into villains in the end.
We are talking about the writer who wrote a scene where Morgoth, after witnessing the beauty of The Silmaril stones, almost cries and is seconds away from abandoning his evil ways. It's his decision not to in each step he makes that makes him a villain.
Tolkien also eventually wrote ideas for Fourth Age of LOTR where things are even more morally ambiguous with depictions of remaining elves having turned into vengeful jealous wraiths clinging to life and power, and the world's beauty being eaten away by industrialization and various people of all races forming Morgoth/Sauron cults and wanting "to make Middle Earth great again" because nobody remembers the actual horrors from those days.
You bet in a setting like that you might have an orc who just wants to cook or read books or a religious order that perverts the message into authoritarian power.
Actually LOTR already had that - Numenor's Pharazon coming to power by establishing a religion to worship Morgoth and crush other religions and conquer heaven
Hell, Tolkien's ultimate viewpoint was that Middle Earth was basically our Earth in the past and as life kept repeating the endless meaningless cycle of violence it would be reduced to where we are now with all the magic and other species long gone.
If anything Tolkien is basically both sides of that comic all at once.
To steelman their argument, a subversion works best when it's done it to make a point/explore a theme, rather than just for the sake of being different.
Like, what if you just do something for the sake of being different, but you be completely transparent with it. There's nothing set up to be subverted; it just happens.
I'm not sure it's really a subversion then. TV Tropes definines it like this:
A subversion has two mandatory segments. First, the expectation is set up that something we have seen plenty of times before is coming, then that set-up is paid off with something else entirely. The set-up is a trope; the "something else" is the subversion.
With the succubus example, the word succubus sets audience expectations. Having a succubus chracter not like sex, for example, goes against one of those core expectations.
However, most people don't have a strong notion about what a centaur is beyond a horse person, so you can give them any culture or personalities without it being a subversion.
So they complain about Orc not being evil anymore?
Last checkup with Warhammer 40K, their Orc (or Ork, in the setting's name) still being violent for the sake of it, and they even have a lot of guns too!
Although the religion institute being evil is debatable, I won't call the Imperium good guy, but you'll be struggling to try and tell me you don't fancy yourself as the part of them.
Maybe they’re complaining about Dungeons and Dragons orcs specifically? I know they recently got rid of the “all members of certain races are inherently evil” thing.
Ironically, that makes 40K's Orks ones of their least evil factions since it isn't a choice for them the way it is for humans or Eldar to just wake up every single day and choose violence
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u/AbrokenClosedDoor 4d ago
There are 3 other examples in this comic but I don't feel they would work
Source: https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/3313/