[Rare Trope] A story element that popularized a concept is actually the polar opposite of that concept

[u/DiveSideways]

Some franchises start off a bit specialized and evolve into something else later. Some stories get warped by pop culture and burdened with misconceptions. Some stories just don't make sense, or send the wrong message on accident.

Not these!

No, these examples are very clear (and not retconned) and yet pop culture has done a complete 180-degree turn on understanding them.

1. Romeo and Juliet routinely gets alluded to as though it's a classic love story. In fact it is an intensely melodramatic tragedy all the way through, everyone is shallow and exploitative and desperate--and they die for it. Even the opening of the play self-indulgently advertises how dire the whole situation is.

2. The One Ring from The Lord of The Rings isn't exactly meant to be a cursed item that corrupts the greedy or weak-minded. Geeky discourse loves to offer up examples of characters "strong enough" or "pure enough" to resist it, but The One Ring turns that trope on its head. The One Ring is an amplifier for power but lesser beings can't make full use of it. Being strong and noble and pure makes you more corruptible, you can bear a heavier load of its dark essence.

3. Keyzer Soze from The Usual Suspects is one of the most famous examples of a villain who fooled everyone and got away with his plotting scot-free. However, the whole huge convoluted mess of a scheme was intended to kill off the last living enemy capable of ID'ing him. Not only did Soze accidentally leave a new witness alive who then cooperated with the police and their sketch artist, he also got himself closely inspected by a whole police station (who now know his true identity.) Yes, it was a good twist and yes, Soze escaped police custody, but his efforts to tie off one loose end resulted in high-quality images of his real face for the FBI Most Wanted list. In most ways this was truly an epic failure for him.

[u/ErraticDragon]

JK Rowling coos over it, saying that the ending makes her cry every time:

There are two books whose final lines make me cry without fail, irrespective of how many times I read them, and one is Lolita. There is so much I could say about this book.

There just isn’t enough time to discuss how a plot that could have been the most worthless pornography becomes, in Nabakov’s hands, a great and tragic love story, and I could exhaust my reservoir of superlatives trying to describe the quality of the writing.

For reference, the ending is nothing particularly special:

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

I can see why a bad author would see it as special.

[u/Time-Weekend-8611 → u/ErraticDragon]

Well, it's a tragic story alright, just not for the male lead.

[u/SoundsOfKepler → u/ErraticDragon]

Just when I thought I couldn't hate Rowling more than I already did.

[u/Faust_8 → u/SoundsOfKepler]

It boggles my mind how Harry Potter actually has several good moral lessons in it, given what an insufferable bigot wrote them

[u/nutzername_gone → u/Faust_8]

I suspekt she didn't Put in morals Out of conviction, but instead copied tropes widely used in fiction, that exist because of other peoples morals.

[u/LateNightPhilosopher → u/nutzername_gone]

In retrospect it should have been super obvious to everyone the moment she included House Elves in her fiction, and built an entire novel's side plot around Hermione being ridiculed by everyone for her Elf-liberation stance, while the narrative itself implies that she is, in fact, the crazy one.

[u/Antique_Ad_1635 → u/nutzername_gone]

Correct, her writing is a magpie nest of other people's popular ideas

[u/ExplodiaNaxos → u/Faust_8]

Several good moral lessons and a smattering of bad ones

[u/LateNightPhilosopher → u/Faust_8]

Harry Potter genuinely taught an entire generation about the perils of corrupt and ineffective government, and how the chaos it sows inevitably gives rise to authoritarianism.....

And it turned out that absolutely none of that was intended by the author. She had Jo idea the lessons that were being conveyed by her own work. She genuinely just thinks that the Ministry of Magic was how government is supposed to work. She thought that that was a good thing, actually, and that the rise of Voldemort and his "Pureblood" supremacists genuinely had nothing to do with magical people's misplaced hatred over their dissatisfaction with their corrupt government and the steady decay of Wizarding society.

[u/freakoutmax → u/Faust_8]

LOL does it?

"You're born one way and you won't actually overcome them. Yes, you can be born evil. "

"Let's mock fat kids."

"Cho Chang."

"Slavery is good as long as master is kind! Let's mock the only person who wanted Slavery to End."

"Our dead heroes were chronic bullies! And that's why Snape, who also bullies children, bullies children!"

Like lmao. There are no good morals in this book.

[u/Faust_8 → u/freakoutmax]

One can argue anything if they’re reductive enough.

[u/arachnophilia → u/SoundsOfKepler]

i mean, she's in the epstein files. her PR team invited him to a premier. after the allegations were widely known.

that whole "protect the kids from trans people" is projection, every time.

[u/TheJarroWhoLaughs → u/ErraticDragon]

She's such a disgusting human being

[u/zen4thewin → u/ErraticDragon]

JFK, Nabakov seriously considered destroying the manuscript because of the horror of the story he had written. Her thinking it's a love story speaks volumes. I guess everyone who becomes a billionaire just slides into pedophilia.

Fwiw, Lolita is beautifully written even though the story is completely twisted.

[u/lunchboxthegoat → u/zen4thewin]

for my money its the most beautifully written prose there's ever been.

[u/Unique_Tap_8730 → u/ErraticDragon]

Its got tragedy and a selfish toxic love of a sorts. She is technically correct.

[u/Admirable-Ad7152 → u/ErraticDragon]

But hey, watch out for the transgenders, they're gonna... EXIST near the kids!

[u/justblameaccounting → u/ErraticDragon]

... That's the controversy of the book, though, isn't it. It's specifically written from the point of view of the predator, who deludes himself into thinking he's in love. From most authors it would have been obvious "step-daughter what are you doing" pornhub slop, but from Nabokov? He knew what he was doing, he deliberately formatted the book as a love story. That's what makes it such a horrifying masterpiece.

[u/ConstantSignal → u/justblameaccounting]

The fact that it is told from the perspective of a character that views it as a love story, does not make it in and of itself a love story.

If I murdered someone you love, and then told the story of committing the act in such a way as to highlight the joy it brought me, would you personally be comfortable labeling the story of your loved one's murder a "happy story"?

Any small degree of empathy for the victim should prevent you from taking a perpetrator's story at face value.

Lolita demands empathy from the reader, so you can look through the warped justifications of an abuser to see the truth. If anyone comes away from that book, feeling it was in any way a love story, they have failed the test of empathy that Nabokov challenged them with.

[u/Neveed → u/justblameaccounting]

The story, even though it's told from the point of view of the predator, isn't that subtle. Nabokov didn't actually format it as a love story, he formatted it as a story where the narrator keeps trying to convince himself this is a love story.

[u/Caramelthedog → u/Neveed]

Exactly. It even opens with a doctor writing that Humbert is an immoral, guilty, predator and that he shouldn’t be trusted.

[u/ErraticDragon → u/justblameaccounting]

Sure, if you delude yourself like the narrator does, you can try to read it as a love story.

But… why? Why try so hard to find good things about a story where a dirty old man kidnaps and rapes a child?

Why not just enjoy any number of other beautiful love stories where that isn't what's happening?

What you and JKR call a love story is actually not that. It's unambiguously disgusting, trying to pretend it isn't. You both fell for it.

[u/Mello1182 → u/ErraticDragon]

Of course she loves it, there aren't any trans people in Lolita... Smh

[u/NoOneAskedForThis12 → u/ErraticDragon]

Ending makes me cry every time as well. But for a completely different reason.