: Re: I have a habit of subverting certain tropes out of hatred. How can I overcome its negatives without losing the benefits? I have a deep-seated hatred for certain tropes and a special way to

@BetL639

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Do you still have a plot?

Seriously. As long as you have a functioning plot it doesn't matter what you do with a trope. The reason a lot of subversions don't "work" is because they neuter the conflict of the plot. They try to be subversive just for the sake of being subversive without adding anything to the narrative. The best subversions still have a good story in spite of or because of the subversions.

Let's say you have a bare bones setting with a lizardmen country and a human country. You try and subvert things by instead of having the usual plot two at war, the two are not at war and have been trading partners for decades. Well that's all nice, but if you don't have conflict in the story, you have no plot. Now, let's say you have a story set in a world where lizardmen and humans have been trading partners for centuries, but the plot is about a lizardman soldier trying to uncover a smuggling ring trying to sell illegal goods between the two countries. Well, now you have conflict and a plot.

There are real examples of this with stories involving lizardmen. Goblin Slayer and Overlord have heroic lizardmen (indeed, lizardmen are rapidly becoming a go-to member of a typical Five Races setting along with elves, dwarves, humans, and orcs/halflings), and Warhammer Fantasy is famous for the technologically most advanced species as well as arguably one of the most heroic (in a Lawful Neutral way) be the Lizardmen. But they don't harp on how it is a subversion, because the conflict of the story has nothing to do with whether the lizardmen are good or evil. Just don't be too overt with how you are subverting the trope and there shouldn't be a problem.

The other major issue with subversion for the sake of subversion is when an audience ignores previously established characterization, setting, or logic in order to make the audience feel a particular emotion. Especially one that takes away more than it adds to the story. You see this most clearly in cases where the authors make their characters behave in ways contrary to their personality to kill of characters or engineer the tragedy they want. This makes it seem like the events in question didn't arise as a result of the character's natural personality traits and flaws, but because the author hit the cast with the Orb of Confusion. Doing that feels like cheap attempts at pathos.

The reason people hated Luke's change in The Last Jedi is that they completely threw his established character out the window to make things edgier. Luke was always characterized by his idealism and his willingness to see the good in everyone to the point of naivete, as evidenced by his entire character arc in the Original Trilogy about him being willing to see the best in Darth Vader. Making him try to kill his nephew in a fit of paranoia over turning evil is the exact opposite of everything that was known about him. If they had stuck with his established characterization and flaws and done something like...Luke's idealism bit him in the butt because Kylo Ren showed clear red flags but Luke ignored it until it was too late under the belief that he could bring out the good in him like he did with Vader and then he became a depressed wreck, that would fit with the flaws previously established for his character and would be subject to a lot less complaint.

People also hated it because it invalidated everything Luke and the cast did in the original trilogy: Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi Order, Leia failed to truly defeat the empire and reinstate the Republic, etc., and as a result it makes the audence wonder why they are watching this if the cast cannot accomplish anything.

If you're writing an original story you don't have to worry about being consistent with previous tone, setting, or characterization, because you're starting things from scratch. If you write several novels with the lizardmen as clearly evil with no redeeming features and don't foreshadow that the species as a whole has greater depth and variation in morality, readers will throw a riot. If you portray the lizardmen as nuanced from the start readers will not see them as evil. If you have a setting where, for example, humans and lizardmen have lived in harmony for centuries and have three-dimensional lizardmen characters, no reader is going to see the lizardmen as "evil".

Readers believe what you as the author tell them directly and indirectly through the story, because they have no additional context in the setting to tell them otherwise. If you tell/show them the lizardmen are evil, they will believe they are evil. If you tell/show them the lizardmen are good/neutral, they will believe as such. The only lens they have to interpret the setting is the one that you give them, unless you are writing fanfiction or works in a pre-established setting.

Additionally, just based on what you wrote above, I would advise being very careful about handling tropes you hate. I can only base my inferences and interpretations of what you are saying based on your original question, but it seems like you are writing a Conan-esque sword-and-sorcery story but you hate all the trappings of the genre. I mean, hating a particular trope or genre is understandable but just based on your question alone by the end of it you just seem to be spitting venom about how much you hate it (no pun intended). It raises the question to the reader of why are you are even writing this kind of story if you hate it so much and it seems to make you miserable.

Most of the best deconstructions come from people who love the genre they are satirizing because they understand why people like the genre and they know the genre's weak spots and where to hit. By contrast, deconstructions by people who hate the genre they are satirizing often come across as shallow and mean-spirited because they refuse to try and understand why people like the genre and end up talking down to the audience (because said audience likes the things the authors hate). E.g., Garth Ennis and anything to do with superheroes. It typically ends up having the message to the readers of "this is bad and you are a bad person for liking this", rather than logically taking apart the assumptions and cliches of a particular story. No one will want to read a story where all the author is doing is slinging vitriol, and if they do it will only be because of bile fascination.

I have my own tropes and cliches that I really hate and I always love the idea of heroic or neutral lizardfolk (or general anthropomorphic reptiles), but whenever I deal with a trope I hate I always try to avoid getting overly worked up about it because I wouldn't be able to stay objective and then I couldn't argue against the trope logically and efficiently. You already seem to be upset over negative feedback on your interpretation when so far it seems like nobody has said anything negative about it. If you're that angry over a trope I would recommend taking a step back and get some breathing room so you can skewer it more effectively.

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