I'm subveeeerting
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I swear, I hate that term so much now. Doing something unexpected for the sake of it doesn't mean you are brilliant. Sometimes a plot twist is great, but it has to be done right. in the book Game of Thrones and Season 1 Ned Stark getting executed was a great example of subverting expectations because of the buildup and how he was a man of honor so readers/viewers (me for sure) assumed he would be saved or that his honor would win out in the end. Ayra killing the Night King was idiotic and I can't help but think "girl power" had something to do with it. I mean you build up a fight between Jon and the Night King only to do that?
Another example of good subversion was Yoda in Empire Strikes Back. They have you thinking of a great warrior and you see a little green guy which served as a lesson for Luke (the less said about how all that was wasted in TLJ the better)
It would subvert my expectations if they actually made something good.
Yea that’s my mentality now. Thank goodness for Leave it to Beaver reruns.
I could re-watch Seinfeld, King of the Hill, Futurama, and the first ten or so years of The Simpsons until the Sun burns out.
King of the Hill ended at EXACTLY the right time. I see that now.
Same.
When Futurama was aired, I was totally blown-away by the universe and how well it was introduced in the first episodes.
You can pick it apart and point how nearly all of it can be found in other Science Fiction work.
I didn't care. To me, it was brilliant and just ''cartoony'' enough.
Later it turned a bit too ''cartoony'' to keep the same vibe, but I still enjoyed most episodes, just not to the extent of the early immersive ones.
For example, the Zoidberg visiting Area 51 was very fun but so different from the first episodes, it could be from a different series.
I take comfort in reruns of The Andy Griffith Show from the first five seasons or so, where Opie is still a cute little towhead, Barney Fife is two-timing Thelma Lou with Juanita at the diner, The Darlings make cameos with their great bluegrass combo The Dillards, Ernest T. Bass comes down from the hills once and a while to throw rocks through the courthouse windows, and Andy is courting Ellie the druggist (I had a childhood crush on Eleanor Donahue).
They are such wholesome morality plays, yet they manage to be really funny without being crude or "transgressive" or political.
Yes! I love that show. It’s funny that all the shows like Little House that my parents or grandparents watched as a kid and I thought were corny are shows I frequently watch now.
Subversion must be earned. Leftists are so excited to get to “the message” that they cannot be bothered to tell a proper story. That’s why their content sucks so hard.
Yep. Ned Stark was built up through the whole first book.
While you could use the word "earned", I think a better one is "predicted", or even "earning", present-tense.
A subversion is nonetheless a part of the literary experience, and subject to the same rules. Part of those rules is foreshadowing. Chekov's Gun.
Chekov's Gun being actively set up and pointed out but not firing isn't subversion, it is poor writing. The reverse, firing a gun that had no precedent for existing, is also not subversion, just poor writing. One wastes the audience's time, the other wastes their suspension of disbelief.
But TVTropes aside, in a proper subversion you don't highlight and point out the gun on the mantle. In the original ur-example, for a subversion Gun it would be merely there as part of the scene-setting. The gun being shot in what was prior a mostly peaceful, or at the very least non-lethal, production (and thus subverting our expectations) isn't "earned", it was just stuck there by the props department an hour before curtain rise. But on a re-watch, everyone knows it was there from act-1, they note the character always sits closest to the mantle for access to it at any time, etc.
The subversion doesn't really become earned. It exists to give rewatching the media new meaning and new insight, new entertainment. If anything, its job is the earning component, not the earned one.
Fruit of Grisaia makes a good example: The common route prior to the per-character story split should be played twice: Once at first for obvious reasons, and again once every character's twists/subversions are revealed. Three character stories are exactly as they should be, standard foreshadowings and predictions. Two are hard subversions, and significantly change the atmosphere and context of many actions they take prior to the reveal. Their story still made sense prior, and if they played it straight, it would have been a fine story, but the subversion changes the tone of many early scenes, and gives new enjoyment to treading old ground.
Game Of Thrones provides an excellent anti-example: "Whamen stronk beat winter king hah no Snow prophecy 4 u" doesn't change the prior viewing experience. We don't see Arya in a new light in old episodes. We don't look at her actions, words, or development and go "ah, well that now feels new and different knowing the future". To the contrary, it actually DETRACTS from scenes earlier on, because time spent foreshadowing the "subverted" result feels like a complete waste, skippable. It makes the media LESS re-watchable.
Holy shit a Fruit of Grisaia reader. Pretty sure that VN took me 100 hours to finish in all. I definitely know you're talking about Michiru for one of the hard subversions, but what about the other one? Amane?
Yeah, Amane throughout the opening, her actions go from "satisfying her urges" to really satisfying her more clinical urges.
She's constantly noted as sneaking food, even from the person she's making a literal dietary diary for, hoarding, the topic of Japanese teenage girls needing survival training came up and she noped out of the topic in the span of a dialogue box, her introduction and posturing as her "role", about a third of the scenes she's in makes some quiet allusion to her true situation, that you brush off on first read.
No no no. Subverting Expectiations, must be earned.
This is just Subversion as a propaganda effort.