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Am I alone...
Am I alone...
#1
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."
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#2
I'm not really certain what you're saying.

"Bad deconstructions suck" seems to be the gist of it, which I think we can all agree with.

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

Epsilon
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#3
It's not that "bad deconstructions suck" as much as it is "good deconstructions don't call themselves deconstructions these days because
the bad ones have left a bad taste in the public's mouth". Self-declared deconstruction = 90% of the time pretentious mockery of the genre being
"deconstructed", to the point that the term deconstruction is only used straight faced by critics, because who wants their work to be associated with
stuff like Spider-Man: Reign?

....but then, several "bad deconstructions" that I listed recorded record-making sales, so apparently I know nothink!
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
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#4
We need more REconstructions, really. OR hell, a EIC at one of the majors who says: Enough Deconstruction! What are we gonnna make with the pieces?
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
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#5
Deconstruction is supposed to be where you take a genre apart and show the audience how unrealistic/hackneyed/boring and repetitive its basic tenets are. This
doesn't require a creator to like the genre, but it also doesn't require unhappiness and angst. Frankly, I think you can't deconstruct a genre
without at least a bit of irritation at it- if you like what you're working with, you'll end up playing with its tropes, instead.

Deconstruction is supposed to be an act of creative destruction, where the creator strips away everything that's been built up in a genre, and shows the
audience the core premises and conventions of a genre, and how they can be taken in a more realistic direction. This is an intentional choice and style that a
creator of a work takes on, but I fully believe that it shouldn't be advertised or announced.

A true deconstruction shouldn't be announced, because it's obvious to the audience that the work is taking things in a different direction. Anybody
billing their work as one is either purely pretentious, or not actually deconstructing the genre. Since I hate pretentiousness and hate -*hate*!- it when people replace the happiness of a perfectly good world with angst, I'll have no truck with either.

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.
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#6
I will use this as an excuse to post one of my favourite sig quotes, apparently from Ken Arromdee:

"In a superhero story, Superman jumps off buildings and flies. In a realistic

story, Superman doesn't jump off buildings and can't fly. Deconstruction is

writing a story where Superman can't fly but he still jumps off of buildings."

Incidentally, I agree that you can't deconstruct something really well unless you actually like the source material; this is (part of) why I think Alan
Moore did a very good job with Watchmen, but am far less enamoured of the works of Frank Miller (especially the more recent ones) in the superhero genre. I
would also say the same of parodies.

However, there is nothing wrong with saying your work is intended to be a deconstruction. Saying otherwise is tantamount to arguing that all deconstructions
have to be unintentional, and I would very much disagree with that. Nor do I think it is intrinsically pretentious to tell people what the intent of your story
is. There is nothing about a deconstruction that requires angst, incidentally. While many deconstructions are "dark and gritty", it is most certainly
not a universal requirement, as you yourself said in your first paragraph.
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