Tropes you've always wanted to avert or subvert...

For me it's Puberty Superpower, don't know why it's just that it's so ubiquitous.

• Subvert Abuse Is Okay When It’s Female on Male and its ilk. In fact, I already do it.

Question - is this tropes that you do avert or subvert, or tropes that you want to avert or subvert but have never actually averted/subverted?

What tropes you've always wanted to subvert and ones you have subverted.

Vasquez Always Dies. And I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Heroes Journey and The Chosen One. I really really want to rebel again those tropes.

I always try to subvert tropes that aren't really realistic for a Real Life-based setting. With a single character, I subverted practically every last trope that pertained to Russians and Germans.

Especially stereotype flipping. Hoo boy, the Stereotype Flip. Those are a lot of fun.

The tropes where children or dogs are not brutally killed on screen. I forgot the actual names but I'd love to see babies bayoneted or animals massacred. Not some blurry aftershots. Also Black Man Dies First

Infant Immortality

Spicy Latina...God, I fucking hate that trope

edited 22nd Mar '11 9:02:21 PM by Anthony_H

I always try to avert most of the biology fail tropes - No Biological Barriers, Non-Mammal Mammaries, that sort of thing.

And I plan to try and avert No Periods, Period, because even if it never came up in the story and no one but me noticed, it would bother me.

I've always wanted to avert X-men style Fantastic Racism, especially from religious fronts. Because can anyone really imagine the Pope declaring superpowers of the Devil?

I would actually see that

But really would you see the world's govermants building purple robots to hut supers down?

How about invert Fantastic Racism and get Fantastic Political Correctness?

Sound interesting.

Tropes I'd like to take a whack at...

• Abuse Is Okay When It’s Female on Male: yeah, fuck this trope. that is all.
• Anything involving guys having their sexuality converted by being ass-raped. I'm sorry, that's bullshit; if a dude rapes me, I'm not going to be questioning my preferences...I'm going to be hunting down said rapist and burying a sharp piece of steel between his thighs.
• Rape Is Love: sorry, no it isn't.
• Its Not Rape If You Enjoyed It: yes, actually, it is.
• The Power of Love: fuck that. Love gets us into more trouble than it fixes.
• Ysandre/Tsandre: both of them can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
• The Chosen One: chosen by who? Not me, not God, and not anyone who matters.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Not so much.
• Bishonen/Bishujo: weak people are weak people. They aren't sexy. Anime characters aren't either.

I'm sure there are others, I'll edit when (and if) I have the time.

Heel–Face Turn, of any sort. Especially High-Heel–Face Turn.

Who Wants to Live Forever?, most of my main characters have a longer lifespan than humans (they're magicians) and they don't mind at all. Mainly because I think a race that's naturally long lived wouldn't have issues with it, otherwise they'd go extinct.

Humans Are Special (that includes Humans Are Average), and the Expendable Clone (this one really bothers me; do authors really not see the moral implications of that one?).

Idiot Hero, especially seeing how I'm working on a Shōnen Light Novel-style story.

Villainous motive tropes are fun to completely mess with.

There are several, especially when dealing with kids shows, that I've either already tried to avert, or would like to.

Not Now, Kiddo and Just a Kid: In my children's show concept, two children detective solve crimes. Not only are they never dismissed for being kids, but they are well respected, have a great relationship with the local police department, and have an incredible reputation where they work and are sought out any time an incredibly difficult case comes up. It's mostly because they are incredibly competent, act professional, and have an amazing success ratio. Some times, the trope is even inverted, where the adults ask the kids too much, and the kids have to remind the adults that they are just children. Adults Are Useless: I think it just sends a bad message to the kids, that they cannot trust adults, even, no, especially, their parents. In fact, I try to avert any negative parenting trope, such as Abusive Parents, Oblivious Parents, etc. In any story I write with children protagonists, the adults are highly competent, incredibly caring and involved in their children's lives.

There are likely more. I'll come up with them later.

edited 23rd Mar '11 1:06:42 AM by WackyMeetsPractical

In what way are you going to subvert this, though? Humans Are Bastards type thing, or some sort of Humans Arent Really Better Or Worse Just Another Species.

Also, I totally agree about the Expendable Clone thing.

edited 23rd Mar '11 2:41:28 AM by petrie911

I usually write down small notes (which I promptly lose) about which and how I want to just screw around with tropes and conventions, especially when they *annoy* me. Take Brains and Bondage, for example, which in itself is a perfectly innocent (you know what I mean) trope about kinks and intelligent people.

But one part of the descriptions really got me; "Brains and Bondage will take the form of waxing poetic about pain or submission", which hit a nerve - because whenever I've seen yupies (or whoever) into BDSM actually do that on their blogs on on TV shows, it's trite and *shallow*. So I sort of want to do something about that. (Probably somewhere along the line of placing a psychologist next to a dominatrix, but ultimately it'd be nothing but a pointless Author Tract) (I'd also feel horrible if I didn't, at the very same time, avert Bondage Is Bad, so there's a second trope.)

Most of the time it comes down to averting or subverting *stupidity*, more than any specific tropes themselves.