In having a distinct....mental twitch whenever I hear someone claim their story is a deconstruction of "Genre/Concept/Character X"? It's funny,
because as an avid reader and contributor of TV Tropes, I'm well familiar with the concept of a deconstruction. But it seems that I keep classifying them
as subversions, because deconstruction seems to have taken on a sort of different meaning.

Doing your own thing is hardly new. Walt Disney is the world's most profitable fanfic writing group thanks to their interpretations of classic fairy tales.
And doing things a different way because it's always been done that way is also, in and of itself, not bad. It's quite good in some cases. We
wouldn't have the "He starts monologuing!" joke from The Incredibles if not for the concept of being aware that concepts exist and that they may
or may not make sense entirely but are part of a given genre.

However, more and more often, whenever I see something being claimed as a deconstruction, I wind up seeing something where you get the feeling the author
either A. wanted very much to write something in a different genre or B. has a distinct distaste for a given genre and is merely applying his personal
"logic" to it in order that we might see how it should REALLY happen. In some cases, this presents interesting alternate takes. The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow and others were useful in the sense that they provided something new and different, but
it seems almost to have produced a second genre. The "deconstruction", where deconstructing a genre just really means you can't stand it and so
you throw out almost everything about the genre you dislike in order to make it into something you like, and then claim deconstruction because, hey, that's
what deconstruction is, right? It means that the end result doesn't have to look like the original. Several comics concepts have become this of late.
Spider-Man: Reign, Warren Ellis's run on Thunderbolts, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Marvel: Ruins, and more. It's almost like considering that taking something happy and
enjoyable, ripping out the happiness by its spine, and cybernetically augmenting it with enough metric tons of angst to fill a Final Fantasy fanfic section to
overflowing is somehow "art" and "making something meaningful out of childish things".

Except it's not.

Hating a genre doesn't work when you want to deconstruct it. The audience should not be wondering "why do you hate this so much if you're writing
it?". If one wants to deconstruct something, they should at least be neutral to the concept, not hostile. And the best deconstructions tend to come from
people that genuinely enjoy the genre they're deconstructing. That know the idiosyncracies and little quirks of a given setting that we make jokes about
because they don't make sense but they're part and parcel of what makes the thing what it is. The Incredibles
is a wonderful, stupendous deconstruction and reconstruction of the superhero genre in one movie, but it's not a grim and gritty pile of angst that makes
me wonder why people actually pay money for this.

It almost seems that the term deconstruction is only used when someone wants their given project to be seen as "art" rather than entertainment, and
that people who are genuinely deconstructing various genres and concepts are avoiding the term due to that association. Given my own knee-jerk reaction to the
word itself, I suppose I can't blame them.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

It is, as far as I can tell, the first evidence of organic chemistry (by which I mean the chemistry of life, as opposed to "anything involving
carbon") in extraterrestrial material.

NASA announcement here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Well, do you?

----------------

Epsilon

Apparently directed by Joss Whedon.

Dance to the Music by Sly and the Family Stone - Otto's Irresistable Dance, basically, as with Kate Bush's 'The Red Shoes.' Dance, Dance,
Dance! (I think?) by Gimeroqoui - A much more subtle effect, persueding targets in the AOE "Eh, why not? Got nothing better to do..." Unless somthing
dangerous or distracting happens they're apt to keep dancing as long as there's music, though they get an immediate 'save attempt' on leaving
the AOE and/or at the end of the song.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I'm placing here a typed and semi permenant listing of all the Dojo information since there has been a small amount of confusion =P

Requirements: Some time before level 30 you should have a mostly white primary and black secondary "Ninja" costume. There are no required
costume bits, just colors so we have matching unit colors.

I've had a thought .... yes we're all going to die ... after a superjump run in with about 8-10 Knives in RWZ I think it would be most awsome and wrong
if we can get as many of the Dojo members as possible to take the Leadership Pool: Assault and Caltrops powers. Note: no one HAS to take these powers but I
can just see the glory of massive stacked assaults combined with room filling amounts of them little wonderful packets of fun known as caltrops. The main
effect of this is to turn the Dojo into one hell of a high damage output blitz team.

With that, the base is comming along rather nicely =) Fight with Honor!

-ZK
"There are no problems that cannot be solved with cannons."
-Chief Engineer Boris Kraus of Nuln

Well, I suppose I might have to say if you don't read http://www.darthsanddroids.net/]this webcomic...

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/podcas ... erFish.mp3]the song (mp3)

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/podcas ... st021.html]the lyrics and credits
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

After nine consecutive days and way too many hours slaving over a hot monitor, I give you....

*dramatic tympani*

...direct from the construction yards at Recton Prime...

*more dramatic tympani*

...the star of stage, screen and fanfic...

*still more dramatic tympani*

the one, the only

I was looking for am online-viewable version, but I can't seem to find just this one. It was part of the Video Game Project 3.

I can't find anything I don't like about it (except for the game stuff edited in). Amazing song, good anime, and a perfect match between the two. I
wish there wasn't a cut in the middle, but it actually flows better with the cut.

http://www.animemusicvide...rs_videoinfo.php?v=98381

The entire VGProject can be seen at the link below. WARNING- LONG FILE!! The part I mean is ~19 minutes in.

http://www.gametrailers.c...eo-game-project-3/320210

http://diceandmen.wordpress.com/

Announcements straight from Gen Con

Anyone else notice Yuku acting kinda... jittery? That is, earlier when people were doing triple-posts.