#cliche subversion

[vivsinkpot]

Writing Clichés to Avoid (And How to Twist Them on Their Heads)

Let’s face it: tropes aren’t the enemy—but clichés? They’re tropes that have been left out in the sun too long and have gone stale. Here’s a lovingly curated list of tired writing clichés that could use a break… or at least a refresh. Use them with care—or better yet, subvert them.

Disclaimer: This post is based on my personal taste and observations as a writer and reader. If any of these tropes speak to you or bring you joy—please, write them! Clichés become clichés for a reason: they resonate. The point isn’t to avoid them entirely, but to write them with intention, care, and depth. Don’t let a list discourage you from telling the story that’s in your heart.

1. The “Waking Up” Opening

Your character jolts awake, hits the alarm clock, and stares in the mirror describing their face? We’ve all read it. Instead: start with movement, a moment of tension, or a choice being made. Readers will learn what your character looks like organically.

2. “She let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.”

The breath. The betrayal. The overuse. Instead: describe physical tension with more specific detail—tight shoulders, a tremble, the pulse in her throat. Let the reader feel the release without the stock phrase.

3. Love at First Sight (Without Any Development)

Attraction is one thing. A soul-shaking, undying love because someone has good cheekbones? Give us more! Build tension, banter, shared secrets, something.

4. The “Chosen One” with No Personality

He’s destined, powerful, and… kind of a blank slate. Give your chosen ones flaws, fears, and dreams. Make their choices matter more than their prophecy.

5. Evil for Evil’s Sake

The cackling villain who just loves being bad is fun, but one-note. Flesh them out. Give them motives, morals, a twisted sense of justice. The best villains think they’re the hero.

6. The “Not Like Other Girls�� Girl

She’s not like the others—because she reads books and doesn’t wear makeup? Let’s raise the bar. Individuality should be about who they are, not dismissing other women.

7. Dying Mentor Syndrome

Beloved mentor trains the hero… then dies conveniently to cause angst and move the plot. You can still kill them, sure—but think about the when, the why, and the impact.

8. Coincidence Saves the Day

A last-minute deus ex machina or lucky break can feel cheap. Victory tastes better when it’s earned—through flaws, strategy, and sacrifice.

9. Describing Eyes Like Oceans/Jewels/Stars

We’re not banning poetic metaphors, but let’s get specific. What do their eyes do? Dart, narrow, glint with mischief? Movement often tells us more than a gemstone ever could.

10. The Abusive Parent Backstory

A staggering number of protagonists have cruel, neglectful, or conveniently dead parents. Trauma is valid, but when every character’s motivation is “I was unloved,” it starts to feel like a shortcut. Instead: explore more nuanced family dynamics. Disappointment, misunderstanding, cultural clashes—those hit harder because they’re more human.

11. The Evil Ex

They’re manipulative, jealous, and exist solely to make the new love interest look better. This villainization flattens complex relationships into cartoonish drama. A better approach? Exes who were incompatible, not evil. Maybe they still talk. Maybe they ended on weird terms. That’s more interesting.

12. Super-Special Skill with No Training

I’m looking at you Rey Skywalker. They picked up a sword yesterday and now they’re beating knights in duels. Nope. Skill takes effort. Show the struggle, the soreness, the early failures. That’s where readers connect.

13. “I Look Down and Realize I’m Bleeding.”

This line gets used in every fight scene, every explosion. It’s become a dramatic reflex. Try a slower realization—weak knees, stained fingers, the distant ringing in their ears. There are other ways to show shock and delayed pain.

14. The Girl Who Doesn’t Know She’s Beautiful

Usually described as stunning by others, but insists she’s plain. Often while men fall at her feet. Let characters have confidence! Or, if they’re insecure, show it in believable ways. Not just over flawless skin and thick lashes.

15. The Grizzled Veteran with a Tragic Past™

He’s seen things. He drinks. He doesn’t talk about it. He’s emotionally unavailable… until he dies heroically. This archetype can work, but don’t let the trauma be his only trait. What makes him laugh? What does he cook? What’s his embarrassing hobby?

16. They’re Poor… But Own an Apartment in the City

Money is real. Rent is real. Struggle is real. If your character is broke, reflect that. Maybe they house-share. Maybe they live with family. Show it in their clothes, their job choices, their fridge.

17. Magical Powers with No Cost

If magic exists, there needs to be a price. Whether it’s energy, reputation, morality, or something darker, tension comes from consequences. Without them, power becomes too easy—and too boring.

18. No Female Friendships

Too many female characters exist in a vacuum of men, rivals, or love interests. Where are her friends? Her study buddy, her work wife, her sister figure? Women need women in fiction as much as in life.

19. The One Token Quirky Trait

He’s a genius but wears mismatched socks. She’s an assassin… who collects rubber ducks. Quirks are great—but don’t mistake them for personality. Let the odd details grow from their story, not just get tacked on like accessories.

20. The Quirky Best Friend™ (On the topic of quirks and lady friends)

They’re loud, chaotic, have no internal life of their own, and exist only to drag the protagonist out of their shell. Often red-haired. Often comic relief. While there’s nothing wrong with a bold, extroverted friend, real people have depth. What scares her? What does she regret? Don’t let her orbit the main character—let her live.

21. The Male Love Interest Who’s Rude But Hot

Grumpy/sunshine can be fun, it’s literally one of my favourite tropes, but not when “grumpy” just means “emotionally abusive.” Snapping at waiters, being cruel for no reason, or playing mind games isn’t charming—it’s concerning. Redeem this archetype by giving him emotional maturity, not just abs and trauma.

Some clichés can be used well—but only if they’re aware of themselves. If you recognize the trope, ask: what would this look like if it happened to a real, flawed, complicated person? That’s where tired becomes timeless.

[momoemarias]

I know it’s due to my bias considering I never played early access, but I honestly love Wyll the way he is in-game? It makes me sad how many people find him boring compared to his EA self.

I mean certain aspects of EA Wyll have piqued my interest even if I only know a limited amount of things from that version of the character. But imo there's a lot of conflict and duality built into a genuinely lawful/neutral good guy who's also a fiend pact warlock. Like that is already more compelling to me than a morally gray fake hero overall.

I think I feel this way because I'm comparing him to the rest of the companions too. I'd argue that most of them lean toward neutral morality, so the fact that Wyll has sturdy, unyielding principles makes him stand out, at least in that way specifically.

It is a bummer that some of his original flavor got stripped away, but I guess hearing people act like ALL of Wyll's characterization disappeared feels wrong as well.

[wolf-tail]

"Hey, you should check out [media], It subverts a lot of clichés of the genre."

Me:

[jeweled-blue-eyes]

Joan of Arc isekai AU where after the real saintess was martyred, her twin appears and pretends she is her sister who was resurrected by the lord in order to get revenge on those who betrayed her

[sciderman]

dog world where we need a cop dog to fall in love with a poor street dog and they're in love and the twist of the movie is the cop dog has to arrest the street dog but he can't do it because he loves the street dog too much

street dog named desire

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

my favorite lyric from every song on the normal album

Suburbia Overture: "Home is where the heart is, you ain't homeless, but you're heartless"

2econd-2ight-2eer: "The devil made me do it, but I also kinda wanted to"

Laplace's Angel: "The only ones in need of love are those who don't receive enough, so evil ones should get a little more"

I/Me/Myself: "It's been a point of contention between myself and this body that they stuck me in, the privilege of being born to be a man!"

Well, Better Than The Alternative: "And when we find out what's wrong with me, could you tell me how Im right for you"

Outliers and Hyppocrates: "Too weird too live, too scared to die, too alien to take you home, horrified at the sight of my reflection in your eyes, I don't belong there"

Black Box Warrior: "Why to thine own self be true when it is you who are the problem"

Marsha Thankk You For the Dialectics: "And good news to the purists, they've discovered a cure for the symptoms of being alive, It's a painless procedure with a low rate of failure, but very few patients survive"

Love Me Normally: "I drank myself to death to be the afterlife o the party"

Memento Mori: "At most a couple generations will remember the ways in which your life never mattered"

[epicdogymoment]

god i love checking in on the jp fujoshi echochamber. tropes get worn out so fast that people are constantly innovating to try and come up with something new. always fun

[milfmacbeth]

one of the worst tropes is when someone is being served potentially poisoned food and they hesitate to eat it until the other guy is like "oh no i'd never poison the food who do you take me for" and then they eat the food. because apparently the guy you suspect of poisoning you would never lie to you about it.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

Does one piece goes like most shonen or does it as you said subverts the ideas? I only watched the most popular ones so idk what are the tropes

(context, i think?)

i think it depends on the trope! not all of which are specific or exclusive to shonen, for the record.

there are some concepts and topics where one piece likes to play with your expectations.

the protagonist with mysterious parentage is… pretty common in shonen. either he has no idea who his dad is, or he knows but his dad’s a mysterious person, never around or never able to answer our hero’s questions. how frustrating! we want answers about our hero’s heritage, the legacy he’s inherited! luffy… doesn’t care about any of that. dragon who? the legacy luffy’s inherited is gold roger’s, a man he has no relation to whatsoever. (though certain fan theories wondered otherwise, for a time.) because blood doesn’t matter, your dreams and will and choices do! the marines don’t believe that, and they’re dead wrong. trying to execute roger’s biological son does nothing for them—it’s in trying to kill whitebeard’s chosen son, luffy’s chosen brother, that they get the war they’ve been wanting.

other concepts are sacrosanct.

the power of friendship™️ is a joke in english-speaking anime/manga fandom, the concept comes up so often in shonen and shojo, but i don’t think one piece would ever mess with that. the importance of your friends, and what you are willing and able to do for them, is so essential to the series. characters can leave, thinking they’re looking out for the crew’s safety, but luffy is gonna get them to admit what they really want (which is to stay part of his crew), and he’s going to bring them back. to do otherwise would be a betrayal of certain fundamental themes of the series. …of course, you could make the argument that ace’s death was a betrayal of those themes. (it was certainly unexpected to a lot of readers—though some had cynically placed ace in a “mentor big brother = DOOMED” box in their heads years prior.) but that loss ends up being foundational to luffy’s resolve post-timeskip. what could have been a betrayal of themes instead reinforced them: luffy’s failed once, there is no way he’s failing again.

and then there are things not sacrosanct so much as… not thought through?

for an example of something played almost too straight, just look at zoro’s backstory. the existence of a girl who dies and is therefore the root motivation for our hero’s entire life is classic fridging. the whole tashigi-is-secretly-kuina fan theory sprung out of the belief that there had to be more to kuina’s story than that, that it couldn’t just be… that.

[wolf-tail]

[greededling]

maxxxine had such a good buildup and totally fumbled the landing :/

[o0anapher0o]

Having watched no time to die for the first time, I think the most irritating thing about this film (and there are a lot) is that it made me actively annoyed they didn't fridge the female love interest like I expected them to for a good 60% of the movie.

That and the tragic underuse of both Ana de Armas and Lashana Lynch.

[coraniaid]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was famously pitched as a subversion of the horror cliche of a young woman walking into an alleyway only to be killed by a monster. What if, the show asked, the young woman turned around and killed the monster? What if she was the thing that monsters have nightmares about?

For the spin-off series Angel -- a "darker" and "more complex" show, as its creators love to describe it -- the writers decided to further subvert the premise. What if, they asked this time, a young woman walked into an alleyway, only to be saved from a monster by a handsome, brooding man? What if the young woman was pregnant? What if the handsome man didn't actually save her, but he felt really bad about her death and brooded extra hard about it for the rest of the episode? (Maybe the monster had lawyers -- everyone hates defense lawyers, right? -- and maybe he could threaten to kill them!) What if the young woman was pregnant? Or what if she was the monster, and so he had to kill her and then feel really bad about it? And what if she was pregnant? Wouldn't that be terrifying? What if there was a young woman and she got pregnant and became monstrous and died, and a stoic brooding man who didn't like to talk about his feelings sat in his office and felt sad about it?

[the-irreverend]

Observing how Noelle is the only one to notice how Kris is not themselves has got me thinking that she will be the one to reveal the truth about our control and be the one to save Kris from it. If that's the case, then it's another ABSOLUTELY GENIUS way the Snowgrave Route subverts traditional gender norms/tropes/cliches we're all familiar with (and sick to death of)!

We're all familiar with the cliche of "brave knight saves helpless damsel from mortal peril" and what makes Deltarune brilliant is it defies that cliche by making Kris (who plays the role of the knight) and Noelle (who plays the role of the damsel) BOTH THE SAVIOUR AND THE ONE IN NEED OF SAVING!

Although we see Kris do knightly things like "venturing to distant lands" and "saving the day from evil," what ultimately makes them also the one "in distress" is that it's not happening through their own agency. They're not imprisoned in a tower or dungeon, but IN THEIR OWN BODY, and we are the one holding the key!

(Not to mention, Kris's non-binary identity adds to the subversion/deconstruction since the "knight saves damsel" cliche is founded upon restrictive and toxic gender roles, and Kris is outside the gender binary, us forcing them to play within these toxic roles is causing great harm to both them and Noelle.)

Speaking of Noelle who although is at the mercy of our actions as much as Kris is, her understanding of Kris and the relationship she has with them help her recognize something is horribly, HORRIBLY WRONG, and that gives her the most potential out of any character to rescue both Kris and herself from the roles we have imprisoned them in.

[satellitefeed]

dealer: this strain is called fizzle rock. like from riverdale

me: whatever riverdale was mid anyway

me 2 minutes later, pacing in circles: archie andrews is the exploration of stereotypical american masculinity and sexuality he is a subversion of the all american boy cliche much like laura palmer was a subversion of the perfect prom queen they are two sides of the same coin like how laura and donna were lovers so too are archie and jughead

the kj apa tulpa in the corner of my living room:

[thousandyearphantombunker]

the thing with subverting or deconstructing tropes is that it's like taking apart a tool or not using a tool-

with deconstruction the tool can possibly still be used maybe you just needed one or a few particular parts- all the moving parts that are needed are still there maybe you got rid of certain things to make it more effective or because certain features where superlfous but it cannot be used the same way anymore- you have to use it differently- the handle might be gone or you need to hold it differently etc-and if you pull it apart too much you render it useless or make it less effective than if you had used a fully functional tool that was never taken apart in the first place.

With subversion your refusing to use a certain tool- maybe the tool isn't need or you have an alternative that works just as well but sometimes you actually do need the normal tool and refusing to use it is stupid and complicates life more than it needs to- you now have to find a way to patch that hole in the wall without drywall and you are either gonna let that hole stay there or patch it up with duct tape or worse make it bigger and use shitty solutions found on tiktok that aren't super effective to fix it- the end result ending up worse than the normal solution of just actually patching it up with drywall.

You can substitute eggs with applesauce sometimes but not always. You can use food due to color things other than food- but some recipes you need eggs. You can't paint a wall with food dye. You can skip adding chocolate chips to your cookie if you don't like them but you can't skip out on flour. If you do then the cookies end up a mess and you've shown you don't know how baking works

Sometimes you don't need a big complex machine and you can take it apart and only use that because it's better for your needs. You took apart the wheel and chain and the motor- that's what you needed and you knew what you are doing because you understand how your bike works and your using the parts you need for your project. Sometimes you need to take something apart to find out what's wrong or how it works or to fix it. But sometimes your destroying a useful powerful tool that you need-and the sad part is a lot of the time you didn't even know how or why it worked in the first place

This addition to the post was written by someone who knows nothing about tools or baking or cooking but I think the metaphor is good

Cliches are tools. You can chose to take them apart or use a different tool that's not typical for the situation or not use them in situations if they are not needed- but often it's better not to take apart a tool, use the typical one instead of something weird, and sometimes you really can't ignore a cracked windshield

Also certain cliches have become subverted and deconstructed so much they've become new cliches and trying to subvert those cliches usually doesn't create anything new or interesting

Hot take in writing:

Subversion doesn't always mean good writing

Subversion is sorta a cliche now

Just because you have subverted a trope or genre, it doesn't mean it is well written

Tropes and certain genres can be well written too, just don't treat tropes or genres like trash

(*looks at the Boys comic*)