BRUTALLY Subverted

This phrase shows up a lot. Much of the time, if not most of the time, it's actually Not A Subversion. "Subversion" is basically the current No Really I Am Not Making This Up So Yeah. I feel like we need a project to go through the search results and clean up this whole subversion mess.

Common variants that spring to mind include:

• Brutally Subverted (About 2,320 results)
• Brilliantly Subverted (About 1,460 results)
• Hilariously Subverted (About 451 results)

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

I am completely on board with helping clean these out. Especially since most of them aren't actually subversions at all.

Brutally Averted, Brilliantly Averted, and Hilariously Averted should probably be axed at the same time.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

As well as "averted HARD". I'm willing to help out as well.

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

There's also the problems of aversions where the media in question just doesn't have anything to do with the trope, but those are harder to spot and probably shouldn't be part of this.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

People will always need to find some way to express that certain examples were more shocking than you would expect.

If you edit them, they will keep using this term.

If you leave them there, they will eventually realize that the term is so common that it doesn't mean anything anymore, so at least they will vary and replace it with other, new terms.

I mean, what's your problem with the word itself? That you are sick of it? Good, if the majority of our audience will also be sick of it, they will stop using it. After all, this is a wiki.

(Though obviously, Not A Subversion misuse needs to be cleaned, but only because it's misuse, not for using the word "brutally".)

I disagree, because I have found that many people (myself included) tend to learn by example when you're dealing with something like a wiki. If there are a large amount of bad examples out there, many new editors will think that's the way you should do things.

I ran into the same thing with This Troper, which I originally thought was the accepted norm at the time I first started editing simply because I saw so much of it.

edited 30th Jan '11 11:44:15 AM by Meeble

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This, completely. People learn by example. We need to make sure the example they see is right.

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

I think this job is better left to a script. It should just replace all "Brilliantly subverted"s and "brutally subverted"s with a simple "subverted". We'll still have the Not A Subversion problem but we'll be better off.

edited 30th Jan '11 11:42:21 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

I've... been deleting "brutal" and its variants whenever I see it ^__^;

I am quite sick of the word, it's like the next egregious. I dunno, I just feel it's redundant. You don't need to tell us that a murder is "brutal", it's kinda in the definition!

As for "brutally subverted"... yeah, that's gotta go. Although I suppose there does need to be an adverb/adjective for when something really fucks with your expectations. Suggestions?

Generally when I go through and clean a page, I remove any sort of [adverb] subverted since it's not necessary.

Fight smart, not fair.

Right, that's what I'm talking about. If tropers will be sick of the word, they will remove it. You are a troper, so if you are personally sick of the word, and started to remove it, this signs that the term is starting to annoy at least some people.

If there are some others who agree with you, some of it will be removed. If there are many like you, many of it will be removed. And if everyone agrees with you, all of it will be removed.

But there is no need organize any effort, or write a script, to remove them just because some of us in this thread don't like it. It's just a word, these things come and go, it's not like stuff where a leadership needs to daw the line between good and bad.

The difference is, that This Troper was objectively bad. It wasn't cleaned up because some people were sick of it, but because it needlessly brought up the editor's person, that doesn't fit with an encyclopedia's purpose.

But "Brutally subverted" isn't objectively bad. It's just a way of saying that a subversion took a deconstructive, Darker and Edgier take on the trope. There is no reason why it would damage the wiki, or alienate our audiance, or make reading harder. If people think that it's acceptable, there is no objective reason for it not to be acceptable.

edited 30th Jan '11 12:40:45 PM by EternalSeptember

I think so. There is a "tropers are pussies" meme floating around the internet, thanks to some of our editors' tendency for melodrama.

That term brings two google results, both of them related to describing too many things as nightmare fuel. That's not really related to the ssue we have here.

Not exactly the same issue, but I think it's related. They're both about tropers being melodramatic about things that aren't really a big deal.

edited 30th Jan '11 2:10:33 PM by melloncollie

So, if they would write "This show subverted it by using a Grimdark Deconstruction" would be less melodramatic?

Because this is objectively what the word "brutally" tries to imply.

For example if the Big Damn Heroes are late, and let the distressed characters die, it is I think it is entirely appropriate to note that this subversion was quite horrifying.

So we should decide this: What is the problem? The specific term, or the very idea of noting that a particular subversion was mean-spirited?

edited 30th Jan '11 2:31:07 PM by EternalSeptember

It would be both less melodramatic and more descriptive. Win win.

The problem with the term is that it encourages the mentality that Subversions Are Good so therefore if your favourite show does it, it must be a subversion because your favourite show is fresh and original, which leads to a lot of Not A Subversion issues.

edited 30th Jan '11 2:34:01 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

My issue is more with the specific term, I guess. "Brutal" loses its efficacy when it starts getting applied to too much stuff.

I consider subversions to be legitimately mean-spirited if the author was purposely writing that way to shake people up and make them feel terrible, like the example you give. But the problem is that many of the examples like the one you describe don't have much emotional impact on me anyway, so reading them described as "brutal" just looks silly. A subjectivity issue, I suppose.

I can get behind your suggestion. Describing why/how the subversion is mean-spirited works better; let it speak for itself. The reader can decide for themselves whether or not it was emotionally effective.

There are thirty four pages of results on Google image search. 340 pages.

That's actually doable if a group do it. I remember I once removed every instance of "partially" subverted and averted from the wiki all by my lonesome.

There are now 529 results of "partially subverted" found across the wiki when I search today. Oh what a well spent summer.

Why don't you try "partially" if you can't agree on the spirit of "brutally"? That one is objectively wrong.

I ran into the same thing with This Troper, which I originally thought was the accepted norm at the time I first started editing simply because I saw so much of it.

It's funny how many times I've seen someone say this. It was true of me too, at first. I just assumed that was the accepted TV Tropes style!

Jet-a-Reeno!

^Same here.

Anyway, I haven't gotten around to working on editing this stuff yet because I've had a really busy day, but I'll get some done tomorrow.

edited 30th Jan '11 9:36:13 PM by INUH

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

Also true for This Troper me.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

Ditto. The only way to really get a meme out of TV Tropes is to do a site wide clean up like this. Hopefully it will cut down on misuse.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I made this experience myself. I was quite surprised when I found out that it was actually bad norm...

So yes, "brutally subverted" and it's variants should be removed. Only This Troper (not me) uses it and he is an idiot.

edited 31st Jan '11 2:52:31 AM by Nyarly

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

I can't think of anything right now, but something can be brutally subverted sometimes. That is to say, subverted to an unexpectedly grim outcome.

But the whole "brutally subverted" thing we're talking here I assume is of the "I can't believe there's no mention of X already" and "SUBVERTED in X when Y proceeded TO DO SOMETHING TO SOMEONE. Here is a gratuitous link to High Octane Nightmare Fuel for good measure" variety. So, well, I'll delete them when I see them.

In short, people want their examples to stand out. This dilutes examples that actually do merit spice-up keywords like "brutal".

edited 1st Feb '11 1:07:01 AM by Catalogue

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

I may be misunderstanding, but do you mean Played for Drama? If I understand right, an actual subversion means that the work makes the audience expect a trope, then doesn't use it. Nothing else.

EDIT: Or do you mean like a character attempting CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable only to fail to save someone's life? That could be pretty brutal, I suppose.

edited 1st Feb '11 10:24:03 AM by INUH

Infinite Tree: an experimental story