The Un-Twist vs Meta Twist: I'm confused.

The Un Twist, according to page description, describes "Deliberately setting up a Captain Obvious Reveal so that viewers suspect a Red Herring, then surprising them by playing it straight." so not really a YMMV. However, according to links to this trope and "no examples" policy, it as "The audience is surprised that there isn't a twist." which is a YMMV.

Meanwhile, Meta Twist, according to links, sometimes describe it as "Author subverting their own twist". However, on Meta Twist page and many (particularly video game) examples describe it as something that's not a twist on its own, but rather subverting people's expectations on their previous experience in the series and things they come to expect.

Has there been some mix-up or silent redefinition in the past? Were there originally three or four pages?

Edited by artman40 on Dec 14th 2023 at 3:48:18 AM

The Un Twist is setting up a twist only to deliver exactly what was expected by the audience, but it is still a twist within the story. Captain Obvious Reveal is a good companion trope, as that is where The Reveal is telegraphed so clearly that the audience becomes convinced it can't be that simple when it is. Due to being rooted in the perception of a Genre Savvy audience that's why they are YMMV.

Meta Twist is based more in patterns that were established by franchises and creators, those known for a Mandatory Twist Ending and the "twist" is that the twist doesn't happen. It's like a Running Gag that is suddenly dropped, and the characters may or may not comment on this.

Edited by EmeraldSource on Dec 14th 2023 at 4:17:33 AM

Honestly I feel Meta Twist should be looked into a bit, the description says that it's specifically a subversion within a franchise/creator of Mandatory Twist Ending, but a lot of the examples are cases where just cases where a plot point common in the series/franchise/creator's work is subverted without the original plot point having been a twist by any definition.

Like the Harry Potter example:

very consciously builds its plot around Harry himself becoming accustomed to being the hero of the story, who each year makes mistakes along the way but ultimately discovers something important and snatches some manner of victory from the situation. This leads him to be utterly fooled by Voldemort, who deliberately arranges this trope in-universe by manipulating Harry into staging a heroic rescue, only to find there was nothing to rescue at all and that he'd put himself exactly where Voldemort wanted him. He accomplishes nothing but putting his friends in grave danger and getting Sirius killed - and, perhaps, convincing Dumbledore that Harry is too dangerously foolhardy to keep in the dark any longer. The first five Harry Potter books follow a specific pattern: the people Harry suspects are never the actual bad guys. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry is actually right about who's responsible, but no one believes him because of his habit of jumping the gun and getting Theory Tunnel Vision about red herrings. Even better, the culprits are Malfoy and Snape, both of whom had consistently been used as blatant Red Herrings in previous books. There's a slight twist, admittedly, but the reader doesn't find that out until Deathly Hallows. Half-Blood Prince also has another one: Up until then, the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher always had been a character newly introduced in the respective book. This turned out not to be the case in HBP. Even Harry and friends were surprised by this. There is a new teacher introduced, and everyone had been expecting him to take the DADA slot, but it turns out the new guy had actually been recruited to teach Potions, and Snape was finally given the position of DADA teacher. Also, in the first five books, the new DADA teacher was always unable to teach a second year. The reasons varied, but they always left the school at the end of their first year. The new DADA teacher from HBP was no longer teaching DADA in the next book, but in a shocking twist, this was actually because he had become headmaster instead.

While the "unexpected bad guy" does count as having initially been a twist, the protagonist being successful or the DADA teacher being a new character aren't inherently twists, they are just plot elements that are later subverted.

Or: In the opening chapters of Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, a main character thinks about her secret lover and why nobody can ever know about their relationship. As Waters' previous books centered on lesbians, it seems obvious where this is going — but the lover is actually a man (the forbidden love aspect is because he's married).

A woman's secret lover being another woman is again not a twist (It might have been one decades ago), but still something subverted.

I wonder if the description should be officially expanded to include examples where the subverted franchise/creator plot point was something other than a Mandatory Twist Ending. One might question how that would differ from Breaking Old Trends, then, but I think the difference would be how both the events of the story and the reader's previous knowledge set up the original plot point to happen in these examples of Meta Twist, while in Breaking Old Trends it's only the preexisting expectations and the story does nothing to foster them. To use one of the examples I posted here, "writer has lesbian protagonists but has one in love with a man in a later book" would just be Breaking Old Trends, but having the character think about her lover being secret and no one could ever know about it would also count as Meta Twist. Though by this definition you would have to remove some of the Harry Potter examples, as I don't believe Half Blood Prince makes it seem within the book like a new person was the DADA teacher before subverting it, it's only audience expectations that do that. And there would also be the problem that if the definition was changed to include this it would exclude some examples that were subversions of a Mandatory Twist Ending. And how you exactly define a "twist" vs. just a plot point.

Worth noting that while the trope was always defined, including in YKTTW, as the absence of a twist that becomes a twist because of the expectation of a twist, the name Meta Twist was proposed in the context of a broader trope. See also a previous TRS thread discussing the distinction.

Edited by MorganWick on Dec 16th 2023 at 11:47:25 AM

So the Un Twist would be something like this: Treasure hunter is searching for ancient treasure. It is found but as a twist, it needs to be abandoned or it's destroyed. However, the audience expects that the treasure hunter won't get the treasure.

I feel like examples not specifically about a twist are misuse and should be moved to Breaking Old Trends instead.

This goes beyond the original question but the issue is that while Meta Twist is a largely accurate name, the name itself can still be interpreted as something else as Meta-Twist isn't as self-explanatory as it should be. In general a Meta-Twist can be interpreted as a Genre Savvy twist (akin to the evolving way some tropes starts as subversions of a cliche before becoming cliche themselves) or its' current definition (setting up a payoff only for the twist to be not follow through with it). Also the issue is attaching "Meta" to anything makes people think "Extra Clever," so that's where examples end up. Knives Out is not a Meta Twist as much as it's an exercise in how convoluted a murder mystery story could be (starts as an open/shut suicide, becomes a Reverse Whodunnit before ending with The Summation that's ten minutes long revealing the true villain).

Examples of the tropes would be:

• The Twist: The second person the cops question turns out to be the killer in the end.
• The Un Twist: The second person the cops question who is evasive in their answers turns out to be the killer in the end.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The second person the cops question has blood on their shirt and turns out to be the killer in the end.
• Meta Twist: The cops immediately spot the hole in their story and arrest them on the spot. The rest of the story involves a related problem. This would be a common tactic in the otherwise formulaic Law & Order.