On Subverting Tropes 

When writing the overall story for Dragonrider's Dance, I thought a lot about the various fantasy tropes that you see in every fantasy story. One of the things that took Dragonrider's Dance forever to write was that I was worried about the story being too tropy and unoriginal. Every time I thought of an idea, it would take two seconds to realize I saw that idea elsewhere in another book/movie/game. It doesn't help that there are a lot of "critics" out there who immediately jump on a story and tear it apart because it had one fantasy trope that's been seen before. 

Why do you want to avoid tropes? You don't. Not really. Want you want to avoid are cliches. Not because "it's not cool to have cliches" but if, for example, the main villain is your protagonist's father all along, or there's a prophecy saying the main hero will overthrow the BBEG and said BBEG pulls an Exodus and kills all the babies from the town the hero's supposed to be from, most people can see that coming a mile away, and it might make the story less enjoyable. 

The flipside is subverting expectations just for the sake of subverting expectations. Doing that risks pulling a Game of Thrones ending disaster where D&D essentially went to Twitter, read all the fan theories everyone had about the end of the show, and "surprise! We subverted ALL your expectations!" And we all know how that turned out. Sure, it was different, but it was unsatisfying and we all walked away feeling empty. 

Instead of thinking "How can I subvert this trope" think, "How can I make this trope more fun?"

First, think of a trope: 

Let's use "The Dark Lord" trope.  There is a Dark Lord that for some unexplored reason must be brought down because he's evil. 

Let's think about this trope and how it's been used in the past/ how has it become a cliche?:

The dark lord burned down the protagonist's village because there's a prophecy that he'll overthrow the Dark Lord, which actually jumpstarts the prophecy, leaving you to wonder had the villain left well enough alone, if the hero would have been motivated to overthrow him. 

Now, how can we make this more fun?

1. Make the protagonist "The Dark Lord" instead. There's a prophecy about a dark lord rising to power, and the "Hero" is actually trying to stop him while he's still young. Sure, maybe objectively, that wasn't very moral, but he's the hero, so of course, everything he does is good and right. This is an interesting trope subversion because it explores the very real idea that everyone is the hero of their own story and people will make excuses to do terrible things because "they're good" and "the other" is bad.
2. Maybe the Dark Lord has some sense of self awareness/read the Evil Overlord List (also a great place for story ideas!), and knows that if he tries to stop the prophecy, it will only accelerate things. Instead, he takes the "hero" as an apprentice. If he's going to overthrow him anyway, he might as well make sure his affairs are in order and that the hero is fully equipped to run the kingdom in his Dark Image after he's gone, maybe marry him to his beautiful and evil daughter when he comes of age. This opens up story ideas where the hero might learn that all is not well, and maybe he doesn't want to overthrow the Dark Lord after all, he was the man who raised him, but might not fit in morally with the culture of the Evil Royal family. Now the conflict isn't whether or not the hero will rise up and overthrow the Dark Lord, but he'll have to choose between his "family" and "what's morally right."
3. Make the Dark Lord a Bad Person, but a Great King that no one but the Chosen One wants to overthrow. How often have you seen fantasy stories where they never really go into how the Dark Lord is evil? Does he oppress people? Does he bring famine to the land? Is he just a psychopath who kills his subjects for fun? In truth, a Dark Lord like that wouldn't last very long. Maybe go the Machiavellian route instead. Make the Dark Lord a competent ruler who is really good at managing farms, doesn't go on pointless wars, and just runs things really well. Okay, so he burned down the protagonist's village and tried to kill him as a baby. Maybe the protagonist's parents were nobility that was trying to assassinate the Dark Lord for their own personal gain, and he just did the Machiavellian thing and tried to kill the baby protagonist in an attempt not to have a revenge killing, now, it failed, but imagine trying to have a protagonist who has nothing but revenge going for him and trying to convince others to join him in his revolution.