Thread by @SamSykesSwears

*crawls out from under your bed as you sleep* anyway another cool thing about #TheWitcher is how they weren't worried about subversion or deconstruction. A lot of the characters lean on tropes and let the relationships between them explore the depth of those tropes.

*disappears as you wake up in a cold sweat* it's a cool thing to observe in this day and age. Stories, especially long-running nerd stories, tend to get catalogued, codified, arranged, so that subversion is the only joy left. #TheWitcher avoids this by being unconcerned with it.

*crawls across your ceiling as you try to fall back asleep* it's worth noting, since as our more prominent media starts to rely on subversion, a subtle pressure is exerted and writers begin to think ALL stories need this, when that isn't true. Subversion is fun, but not necessary

*descends from above to whisper in your ear* in fact, it can end up sucking. When you set a story up based on subverting an expectation, your characters start acting in expectation OF that subversion, sacrificing unexplored conflicts and relationships as they march to that end.

*chases you as you run screaming out of the room* but what's interesting is how #TheWitcher doesn't even bother. There's still tropes: a gruff and tough monster hunter, a spoony bard, a sexy and mysterious sorceress. They just let these tropes DEEPEN their characters and conflict

*answers as you pick up the phone to call for help* confidentially, I think some people didn’t bother looking deeper than these tropes, which can be a hazard. But note #TheWitcher didn’t worry about the people who were deliberate about not getting it, another important lesson

*pursues you into the woods* crucially, though, #TheWitcher is concerned with how these tropes create problems for their characters. Swords and magic can’t solve the important problems and often make them worse

*whispers to you from the oppressive trees* we accept these problems readily, since the tropes give us framework to refer to unconsciously, which is good because the tropes are only framework: the meat of the story is how the characters react to these problems they have.

*bursts out of the damp earth in front of you* in this way, the tropes provide a recognizable framework that then squeezes the characters, letting us get into their conflicts right off the bat. By choosing NOT to worry about subversion, #TheWitcher lets us worry about the people.

*drags you down into a lightless warren* the takeaway here is trust
#TheWitcher trusts its audience to get what it’s doing and doesn’t worry about those who don’t
And because all elements of storytelling are connected, this trust lets us care more about the people than the tropes

*entombs you within a cocoon* trust is what lets you tell a human story; trust in the characters to do things that make the plot messy, trust in the audience to get it
it's not flawless--in fact, it's quite messy--but messy stories resonate, messy stories get remembered

*adds you to a grotesque web* Anyway, it's kind of a shame that so many stories get judged primarily by subversions, intricacies, twists; these are technicalities, side dishes. They can be great, but they aren't meant to nourish like a main course is

anyway, I was going to add a summary, but my dog needs to go outside so I guess I'll just trust you to figure out what you need to from this!