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| - CAUTION: Read this article carefully before using it -- if you don't, you'll probably mistake it for Not a Subversion. Basically, this is playing bait and switch with a trope. A work makes you think a trope is going to happen, but it doesn't. But how could people know a trope is going to happen? Well tropes live in the minds of the audience. As such, sufficiently Genre Savvy (or Trope Savvy) audience members can predict a familiar trope coming based on the hints dropped by the writer. So when the writer decides to build on this expectation, only to reveal that the expected "trope" was a Red Herring while an entirely different situation results, you have a Subverted Trope. Phrased another way, the work is ultimately revealed not to be using the trope at all, but in the meantime was played up to look like it was. This is one method of leveraging a trope to give a story texture. It certainly isn't the only way. A subversion has two mandatory segments. First, the expectation is set up that something we have seen plenty of times before is coming, then that set-up is paid off with something else entirely. The set-up is a trope; the "something else" is the subversion. It is a deliberate act on the part of the characters, as though they are expecting the trope themselves. To put this another way, a trope of the form "X are often Y" is not subverted by every X you can think of that isn't Y. If someone is murdered and there's a butler around, but he didn't do it, that's not automatically a subversion of The Butler Did It. But if the writer makes it look like a typical example of The Butler Did It, then reveals he didn't, that's a subversion. A full comparison could go something like this: A car chase is in progress at reckless speeds. The camera cuts to some workers carrying a Sheet of Glass, then cuts back to the panicked driver headed towards the workers. It seems pretty obvious that the driver is going to smash the glass sheet into a million fragments ... or is it?
* If the car drives through the pane of glass, it's played straight.
* If the car misses the pane of glass, it's subverted.
* If something else causes the glass to be broken before the car can even make it to where the glass pane broke, it's also subverted.
* Another subversion is if the car hits, but somehow the car phases through and neither the glass nor the car is broken.
* If the car misses the pane of glass but something else causes the glass to be broken, it's a double subversion.
* If the car hits the pane of glass, and the result is that the glass merely has a car-shaped hole in it, that's downplayed (and also Played for Laughs, but that's another matter.)
* However, if the car hits the pane of glass, and the result is that the glass merely has a car-shaped hole in it, but the pane of glass collapsed on itself, it's either played straight or a double subversion (And also breaking a downplay).
* If the car hits the glass, but it's the car that shatters (instead of the glass), it's inverted (and a very shoddily-built car at that).
* If there is no pane of glass at all, it's averted. Conclusion: when posting examples, remember that just not doing a trope isn't the same thing as subverting it. Unfortunately, most tropers tend to forget that. In addition, kindly avoid using "subverted brutally" or "subverted hard" when describing the manner in which a trope is subverted. There is no guarantee that your example was subverted any harder than the previous one. Bear in mind that, just as Tropes Are Not Bad, subversions are not automatically good, witty, clever, or original; conversely, don't hesitate to add a subversion (that's actually there) just because you think the work is inane and stupid. Meta Trope Intro compares this with many other ways that a trope can be used. See also Discredited Trope, Dead Horse Trope, Double Subversion, Downplayed Trope. Examples of Subverted Trope include: Every trope page has 'subverted in...' somewhere on it. Please, apply the Wiki Magic!
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