Do you have any subverted creatures?

[Feith]

Well, I'm not sure if this counts "subverted", but in the world I've made for my fantasy series, I have Faeries and Pixies listed to two different beings - though technically, the Pixies are a sub-category of Faeries. I have it so that Faeries are only female, and tend to have lighter, brighter, more cheerful abilities and personalities, while Pixies can be male or female, have shorter hair and sharper features, and tend to have somewhat darker powers. Also, I have two different types of sirens - the mermaid sirens and the bird sirens, modeled after the original Greek sirens. The mermaid sirens are an extremist group of mermaids who hate humans for polluting their waters and use their voices to drown as many as possible. The bird sirens are shifters who can switch between human and bird forms, but don't specifically belong to either species, and use their songs for their own amusement. They are neither good nor bad, but have been known to enchant any human males they find interesting.

 

[Insolent Lad]

For better or worse, I have attempted to provide 'logical' explanations for very unlikely creatures of myth. Griffons, e.g. are a large primitive (closer to the dinosaur roots) bird with a lion-like ruff, but are definitely NOT part lion. I've done similar stuff with the the mantichore and such. Similarly for human-like creatures, I've tried to fit them into our evolutionary family tree. And anything human-ish is going to be like us, neither innately good nor evil, and with similar motivations.

 

[Orc Knight]

Might actually throw in just some of the subverting I've done. Though I will play with most things in Fantasy anyways.

All the Fea and Greenskin sorts are descended from nature spirits like dryads and nymphs and sylvan, though played with by the gods a little.
Griffons are the above's natural predators and humanity actually uses them (insomuch as one can use them, they'll eat their riders too if they get the chance) for their air force and some knightly classes. They are also sapient and realize what's going on, but stick with the humans for the most part.
I did a whole post on how my drow are different and my wood elves are extremely predatory and start most the wars. The ones the drow didn't start.
Dragons and humans came about at around the same time, making Eld's dragons one of the less powerful forces of the lands and likely to be pressed into slavery or service to the likes of elves or even humans. Their counter is Dragon Cults to gain power. Or at least a fair few of them. It's that or service or food, the latter of which the Cult dragons often end up as.
Orc's would prefer farming, but will fight for their lands and homes. Trolls have some of the best libraries and architecture about. Goblins run the gamut and are usually found in service to the above. Ogre's are some of the best cooks around and it's not usually human flesh they're cooking. Also polite and semi-nomadic.

 

[Yora]

I'd say what I am doing with goblins would count. They are some kind of mishmash combined with gnomes and halflings and turned into a kind of stoic fey race. They are reservedly polite and very averse of confrontations, but will come back later at night with a lot of friends to take back whatever they have been pressured to give up or promise by bigger people.
They are not normally hostile but you never want to piss them off and they have absolutely no hint of any inclination to fight fair with anyone bigger and stronger than themselves.

 

[Ruru]

I only have a couple that feature prominently. The much younger version of my story included flying horses. Over time practicality has caught up, and what I've ended up with is a meat eating creature with clawed feet and a membranous wing with large feathers at the outer tip for glide control. I guess dragon meets horse? They are no bigger than a small horse, and compact to allow for aerial acrobatic territory displays.

The other is a shape shifter, which is actually a throw back lineage from my main race: instead of using their Earthen energy source as a healing/regenerative tool, it is employed in shape altering. But there are fairly sever rules: they cant go from big to small and vice versa, all that matter has to go some where, or come from somewhere. And the young ones have to learn how to shift: as in how to get the feel of having all the tendons and muscles in the right places so as not to end up as a heap on the floor.

 

[Yora]

I am also quite happy with my trolls. Though they are really not original in any way. They are basically Japanese Oni with the personality of Elcor from Mass Effect.
They are big, strong, tough, have some minor magic powers, and they are not really getting agitated by anything. They are mostly nonagressive and humbly polite, but will absolutely smash anyone who is looking for a fight into the ground.

 

[Horus]

I've done a few, but only to account for ethnic/gene/culture diversity amongst a very large population. Even humans in my setting aren't always entirely "human" as it were.

I have a particular ethnic group of dwarves that aren't small at all. They're still stocky and muscular, but can range in height from 9 to 12 feet tall. In the same setting, there are species of dragon that will never be bigger than a dog, but there are canine species that can be as big as houses. Orcs are very intelligent and one of the only races to have invented the blast furnace in the First Age, giving them a large advantage in the fields of metallurgy. Yet, they don't destroy their environment for industrialization because they hold nature to be sacred.

In contrast, Elves (with the exception of one ethnic group) aren't close to nature at all, and find this stereotype to be very insulting. They build around the nature of their homeland, but only because they don't wish to disturb the environment in a way that can cause an ecological shift/damage. Humans misinterpreted this, and other cultural practices, to mean that Elves revered nature. They traditionally strive for technological/magical pursuits over spiritual ones, .

 

[raygungoth]

Since I filled my world up with dinosaurs, I made "unicorns" be/resemble light-bodied Dryomorphid Iguanodontians.

It's not technically "subversion," but multiple cultures in my works use the word spirit, demon, faerie, god, and witch interchangeably.

For my urban fantasy work, my vampires originated in Africa. The first vampire was a woman who killed and drank the blood of her husband to prevent herself and her baby from dying. The sun, seeing this as it was beginning to set, cursed her and her progeny to forever drink only blood. She made a bargain with the rising moon that she and her children have an escape in the form of consuming guilt and hatred.

 

[Orc Knight]

Since I filled my world up with dinosaurs, I made "unicorns" be/resemble light-bodied Dryomorphid Iguanodontians.

Oooh, another dinosaur lover eh? I actually have a setting with them too and the feathered variants are often called birds or dragons. Or the usual 'saurian' in my current fantasy setting.