I ran across an article where the author couldn't resist a dig at "toxic nerds" and of course mentioned the sacred cow of The Last Jedi. I remember walking out of Last Jedi bored out of my mind and so I was very confused when I heard so many critics going on and on about how brilliant it was and how it subverted the expectations of those who wanted to see a more heroic Luke Skywalker, and (I think this was the first time I saw this line of reasoning) this was why that is a good thing.
I will never understand why Last Jedi and Female Ghostbusters are the sacred cows for media shills. I also hate how with modern entertainment doing something unexpected for the sake of it will get the shills clapping like seals.
Some horrible examples of subverting expectations in recent memory are Arya killing the Night King (I mean having Jon have an epic battle with the Night King couldn't possibly make any sense), Robin being a lesbian in Stranger Things season 3 (they actually said the original plan was for them to be together so forgive me if I think they changed things for woke points), and of course Last Jedi.
However if well done it can be good. I know I've made posts bashing George R. R. Martin but the man is a great writer and he said he set out to subvert the tropes of Tolkein when he wrote Ice and Fire. While I will never put him and Toklein on the same level, I will admit book 1 (season 1) was a great example of subverting expectations since Ned Stark was the main star of the show at that point.
To me another good example would be Yoda in Empire Strikes Back turning out to be a little green guy that seems like a nobody.
What would your examples be of a good subversion of expectations?
You have to understand the philosophy of the enemy if you want to know why they defend Last Jedi and Gurlbusters so much.
Leftism is satanic. They are demon worshippers whether they admit it or not, and a surprising amount of them will. Satan cannot create. He can make nothing, he can only distort, warp and debase. And that is true of his servants as well. All who follow the enemy succumb to his ways.
That is why they fetishize these grotesque mockeries of something that was once good. That is why they seek to seize things you love, strangle them, skin them and wear the skin around like a suit. Because they cannot help themselves from emulating their master. You can see his cruelty and love of debasement in their every action and in their very eyes. They know they're ruining something good. They like it that way.
I'd say its less that and more of a natural result of overstimulation.
Normal well-written stories don't get a emotional reaction out of them anymore so they need something new and novel to stimulate them just so they can feel something.
It's like a porn addict who seeks more and more depraved pornography to get the same orgasm he had when he picked up porn for the first time.
The people who clap like trained seals for “subversion” are mostly just deconstructionists. The product they desire is destruction, and that destruction requires fuel. The fuel of choice is your cherished IPs and cultural touchstones. That’s why these critical theorists are so obsessed with obtaining access to your favorite franchises. The most meaningful subversion is of the most valued properties. Burning down an ugly modern mansion is no big deal - in fact, it’s usually an improvement. They want to burn down cathedrals. The impact of the subversion is directly proportional to the importance of the thing you destroyed.
Well said
Remember the South Park episode where they have Spielberg and Lucas charged with raping Indiana Jones? That was a good example of subversion, because we didn’t believe it could get worse.
Oh yea! So true
One fucking retard heard someone get praise for 'subverting expectations' and now they all think doing the opposite or worse than what people hope for is now some clever trick to get attention and praise. This is how the mind of a retard works. They cannot comprehend how a true subversion can be pulled off, and think it means 'opposite'.
That’s true. It seems to be all the rage and using the term subverting expectations makes the critics sound smart I guess
GRRM and his stupid show spoiled the idea of subversion.
It became a free for all, much like everything these days. Everything was subversion. Like free love, and free-for-all sexuality.
Now its just annoying, because every character is disposable, meaning the stories have no strength to them, because there is no triumph over adversity. Only Ex machinations.
I never actually put that together, but that is so spot on. So much has turned into soap operas. I wonder if that is why I never manage to finish them. The Walking Dead for example, I liked it at first then wondered how many times they were going to do the same stupid thing over again in a slightly different way.
You're most likely right. Never watched the other shows you mention, but the hype in GoT got me to waste time on 2 seasons of titillating trash.
The non fart-sniffing word for "subverting expectations" is disappointing.
The positive version is "pleasantly surprising". But the neomarxists who control entertainment can't allow any cultural touchstones that unify people. Only sew division to foment unrest.
An outragous and contentious example is picked to serve as their totem because it is outragous and contentious. Planting your flag here proves to all who look exactly what side you are on.
Look at the BLM. They didn't rally around the cause of eric gardener, or of Breonna Taylor, and its because they weren't useful as a shibboleth. They were mentioned a couple of times but their cause was never persued. And it is because it was a bipartisan issue, Even conservatives and libertarians were gunna say "yeah nah thats outragous, never shoulda happened" for those cases. And so to the professionally outraged, they were useless. Instead, they rally when an absolute piece of shit who deserved death dies of his own doing. It was ridiculous on its face. That's what made it useful to them. That's why it served as such a good purity test.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
The video game Jade Empire had a great one, as described by Shamus Young here.
The key is that it's not enough to give the audience something different to what they were expecting - it has to be so much better that they are happy they didn't get what they wanted.
I've come to see this behavior as sort of a humiliation ritual. They know these movies are steaming garbage, they know troons are disgusting and never pass, they know drag queens are degenerates. THAT is why they defend all of these things. They believe that publicly defending something disgusting makes them seem like good people, and the more disgusting and indefensible it is, the better. They humiliate themselves on purpose to signal their allegiance to their in-group: "Look, I'm so loyal, I'm willing to make a complete fool of myself in public for the cause."
Red Eye. If you haven't seen it, go in blind.
No, it stars Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy.
Something about that movie really bothered me that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Like somehow it entered the Uncanny Valley of Science Fiction that tripped my disgust reaction.
When they 'broke the code' and it turned out to be a ratio of dark to light to convey meaning, I lost all interest. They've got this really complex looking symbol and through super complicated and sciency computer analysis, they come up with: 60% dark and 40% black and now they can somehow 'understand' them. My opinion went from, "ok, what's going on? Where are they going with this?" to "these writers don't know how stupid they are."
I'd have rather they kept it completely unexplained.
Then she has to call up the Chinese dude, but she has to see the future where she's already called him so she knows his phone number before she can place the call to save the world for the future to happen. I mean, most time travel related movies at least try to avoid paradoxes like that, and this one didn't have enough awesome Schwarzenegger blowing shit up action to make it forgivable.
That was the other thing: you had the soldier listening to Right Wing Talk Radio that almost fucks everything up, and the Liberal Smart Woman has to clean up the mess.
You may have unlocked my disgust reaction: this was basically a Schwarzenegger flick for Liberal Smart Women, in the sense that the protagonist is the sort of person that all Liberal Smart Women want to be. It also operates from a moral framework that is the complete opposite of a Schwarzenegger flick.
It also explains why the Liberal Smart Woman I watched it with really liked the movie.
It wasn't that. Part of it is I thought the plot stretched the Sapir Worf hypothesis beyond credulity. Then learning the alien language effectively rewires her brain, but the language itself is shown to be rather mundane for its ability to rewire her brain on such a fundamental level.
Something in all of that just bothered me.
They never explained the mechanism, but I think we're getting into areas where the movie itself didn't entirely understand it either. That might have been the other part of what bothered me: sometimes you get the sense where the writers have a better understanding of the mechanics of their story than they convey, because they have to "dumb it down" for the audience. But I didn't necessarily get that sense from watching the movie.
I think someone just read an article about how different languages make it easier or harder to understand certain concepts, and then took that concept to an extreme without really thinking through how what they wanted to do was even physically possible.
No. That’s been on my list to watch forever. I need to see it.