Also, a lot of people fall way too much in love with worldbuilding and OCs to actually know how to create an actual story. Most subverted expectations come from trying too hard to look cool without having anything to really say.

@Jack Montana
You wanna watch Frieren in that regard! Because the demons in that anime are INHERENTLY evil. Their whole nature, instincts and such makes them monsters. There was even an episode, in which a human took in a demon child. It explains perfectly, why Frieren wants to kill all demons.

@Zero sounds like you need therapy, man

Problem is, market is so overloaded with media that it's impossible to stand out. So the idea becomes "let's see what page on TV Tropes we can flip." Nobody knows how to tell a story anymore, but that's because they're addicted to YouTube/TikTok garbage.

Also, none of that "classic" fantasy went away? New iterations are just less popular because it's already been done. If you want to actually sell your game/book/whatever, you can't just do "Tolkien, but worse" (or Warhammer, or DOOM, or whatever).

@Chiribito Sardina I mean, these days churches are mostly tax shelters for pedophiles, so...

@T.chicken I find that a bit better since a whole organization is not a hive mind along with races being can be morally good or bad but the culture can influence them.

If you keep subverting expectations long enough, they become the new expectations. I gave up on D&D once this started becoming the norm and people expected me to DM their woke therapy sessions. I don't even know or care what D&D is at this point, it's dead to me.

For some reason @Chiribito Sardina
Castlevania had a take where we had not!Frollo who burned a witch as a take on evil church and terrorize Jew/Cathar/Gypsy expies.
But God isn’t shown as malevolent and even cynical Simon Belmont utilize holy weapons to defeat demons and a kind priest bless water.

I'm ateist, but it hurts to see how the church (almost always is that chuch) eviliced like that. I mean, the chuch made more things than burning people and taxing.

About species/races/whatever, I prefer a general grey morale in which everyone whitout exception is kind of a jerk.

Double subversion is more fun anyway.

--> Nowadays, everything has to be either a complete 180 degrees subversion, or a stand-in for a modern demographic, which unironically results in an extremely stale writing. Case in point, the sheer number of modern fantasy where "humans are the real monsters" is used as a plot point.

@Jack Montana: I think the main difference is the scope. Decades ago, subversion was "the orcs are the bad guys, but not all of them are pure evil", or "demons want to destroy the world, but they may have a code of honor that lets you reason with them". -->

Idk even back then there was already subversion in the early 90s and 2000s with religion being evil and races being misunderstood. Wouldn't call it classic vs modern ideas of fantasy though you can make a argument they don't execute it well today.