Deconstructed Character Archetype in Literature.
- 4 Kids in 5E and 1 Crazy Year: The Chinese Ah Kum seems like a straightforward Asian and Nerdy girl, being a Shrinking Violet who gets perfect grades on most assignments and paints, writes, and knits. However, as she enjoys hanging out with Lovable Alpha Bitch Destiny, secretly wants to dye her hair and only cares about her grades because her terrifying father wants her to be a pharmacist when she grows up to improve their status as poor immigrants and will make her life Hell over The B Grade, let alone anything less than that. Destiny makes a mental "Not So Different" Remark about Ah Kum and Max after seeing the look on Ah Kum's face as Max yells about his abusive father during an argument.
- A Hero of Our Time deconstructs Byronic Hero in Pechorin: a brooding, selfish outcast from high society who inadvertently brings ruin to everyone he meets, especially the women who fall in love with his romantic persona.
- Though not an initial focus of Alex Rider, the series ultimately becomes a deconstruction of the Teen Superspy, removing all romanticism from the concept and presenting Alex as, essentially, an unwilling Child Soldier. Alex is repeatedly forced, often through blackmail, into working for MI6 and finds absolutely no pleasure in having to fight for his life against terrorists and Diabolical Masterminds. Instead, as the series goes on, he finds himself alienated from his friends and failing out of school as a result of spending most of his time on globe-trotting adventures to save the world. He also becomes increasingly traumatized by having to escape mortal danger on a regular basis from the age of 15.
- Animorphs deconstructs Kid Hero and the associated tropes Recruit Teenagers with Attitude and Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World. It's obvious from the get-go that the kids, having no sort of military knowledge or practical connections whatsoever, are pretty much just making it up as they go and doing the best they can with what they have, and they're closer to Child Soldiers than anything else. As you'd expect, fighting as an uncover guerrilla resistance agent tends to take up a lot of the kids' spare time and energy and is too important to leave to an extra-curricular schedule. The war takes place at the expense of the kids' personal lives (sometimes forcing them to fight for up to, it is mentioned, three days straight without sleep) and their grades and sociability are pretty much done for by the end of the series. After three years of guerrilla warfare, 5 very traumatized kids, each broken in their own way, are left, and many of the relationships they had during the war fall apart after it's over.
- Attack of the Mutant: The Mutant could be considered a sendup of many grandiose "ultimate" comic supervillains, particularly from the 90s. While he's incredibly powerful and a formidable foe, the Mutant's victories seem to come from his superhero rivals being written considerably less competent to hype him up, if the Galloping Gazelle is any indication. As such he longs for a real challenge, to the point that he's willing to stalk a preteen boy who's hardly hero material himself. For all his buildup as a powerful menace, the Masked Mutant is a petulant and unfathomably immature man who dies in the end because he just doesn't know when to walk away from a fight.
- Carrie:
- Carrie White is a deconstruction of Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. She is not treated as just a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold (as the film adaptations do), but as somebody who had been harboring some seriously dark thoughts, and while the ruthless bullying sent her way was bad and made her into a monster more than anything else, she still killed hundreds of innocent people during her rampage.
- It also deconstructs the Alpha Bitch, The Bully, and the Delinquents with Chris Hargensen. It shows that the kind of person who wants to humiliate and hurt people so badly — especially people who have done nothing at all to them — would have to be seriously screwed up in the head. Chris's "friends" don't actually like her that much, the principal thinks she needs to be locked up, and the only reason she hasn't been thrown in a padded cell is because her father is an Amoral Attorney who keeps pulling some strings to get Chris out of trouble. Chris is so twisted that when her boyfriend Billy starts abusing Chris in kind, not only does Chris not resist, but she's excited by it.
- Carry On deconstructs Satellite Love Interest with Agatha, the main character's girlfriend. She is deeply unhappy in the relationship and her feelings for Simon aren't really romantic, but because Simon is The Chosen One and he chose her as his girlfriend, she feels pressured into the role of a perfect girlfriend, even though she feels like she's just a prize to be won by him. This eventually leads her to have a brief crush on Simon's nemesis out of sheer boredom in the relationship and then break up with him. The break-up even makes her realize how much of her life was consumed by just being Simon's girlfriend, as she notices that the school life is very quiet once she doesn't have to deal with Simon's yearly magical adventures and that she hasn't made any friends in the school outside of him.Agatha: You just want a happy ending.Simon: Merlin, Agatha, don't you?Agatha: No! I don't! I want to be someone's right now, Simon, not their happily ever after. I don't want to be the prize at the end. The thing you get if you beat all the bosses.
- The titular Constance Verity of the Constance Verity Trilogy is what a Regular Caller looks like in the later stages of their franchise. Being The Chosen One who's heeded the Call to Adventure since she was seven years old, she has been at the center of every Ancient Conspiracy, mythical prophecy, fantastical war and cosmic event you could possibly imagine. Being the protagonist of every story comes with a lot of Plot Armor and interesting stories to tell, but it also makes her a Weirdness Magnet for every evil plot, two-bit thug, savage beast and other dangerous things that think it's a good idea to pick a fight with her, often for no good reason. Having Seen It All, she's Genre Savvy enough to know how everything plays out, but she still has to endure all of the cliches everyone else insist on playing out. Since the novelty of the fantastical is so common for her, she prefers in relishing in the more ordinary aspects of her life between adventures... except she discovers that the more ordinary parts of her life was itself fabricated by yet another conspiracy that she has to uncover and dismantle.
- Discworld has a few of these, since Sir Terry Pratchett's brand of humour is largely based on taking something seriously that was not intended to stand up to it.
- Cohen the Barbarian is something of a deconstruction of a Barbarian Hero; Sir Terry wondered what happened when Conan got old, and realised he'd have to keep doing it, even if his back was going and he'd lost all his teeth.
- Moist von Lipwig, when he first appears in Going Postal is a deconstruction of a Lovable Rogue, who requires quite a lot of Character Development to actually become lovable; he's initially a callous user who sees people as things (the ultimate Discworld crime).
- An early Deconstruction of Knight in Shining Armor exists in Don Quixote, in which the eponymous character attempts to take up the role in an age when chivalry has been abandoned. While Hilarity Ensues is in effect, it is also clear that the titluar Knight of the Sorry Face tends to do more harm than good due to his delusions.
- The novel as a whole deconstructs chivalric romances themselves, but also of the attitudes they foster in their readers. While Don Quixote takes things to extremes for the sake of a good laugh, Cervantes uses him to make the point that living one's life in the real world strictly by an idealized, incomplete, and oft-contradictory code of chivalry is ultimately an exercise in absurdity.
- Literary critics note that the second part of the book is perhaps an even more comprehensive deconstruction than Part 1, in that it tackles the thin line between fiction and reality. When Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet aristocrats, Dukes, Kings, and Village Prefects, the latter engage in petty and cruel games intended to see Don Quixote do something crazy. In their interactions, critics from Miguel de Unamuno and Harold Bloom note, the books make a larger point that all of society essentially rests on a fiction; aristocrats have to act like aristocrats to be aristocrats when their authority and power is actually unearned and arbitrary. In the episode where Sancho Panza is made-to-believe that he's actually a governor of a small village, he proves to be far more competent than the real and actual governor of the village. The point at the end is that, Don Quixote in openly making himself a hero out of chivalry isn't anymore crazy than aristocrats making themselves rulers based on imagined lineage or traditions rather than merit.
- The nature of reality and fiction get tackled even further in the Puppet Theatre episode of Part II. Don Quixote criticizes a puppet theatre's poor staging of an event in the Crusades and keeps heckling it/stage directing to make it real. Don Quixote's constant needling and addition of details ultimately culminates in a staging so realistic that Don Quixote goes nuts and charges in and fights the puppets himself, completely falling in with the fiction he created. Likewise Don Quixote, while an annoying madman in the first book, in the sequel discovers that he's actually become a Living Legend, with fan authors writing spurious legends of his life while Cide Hamete Benengeli is accurate, but denies him royalties. In other words, Don Quixote somehow managed to become a real-life legendary hero with many alternate versions and apocrypha of his adventures spreading around.
- "The Story of the Good Little Boy" by Mark Twain is a short story that deconstructs the "Good Little Sunday School Boy That Teaches Lessons" archetype that was popular at the time by making the protagonist try to fit the mold of the Sunday School characters, but ends up being ridiculously Wrong Genre Savvy about it all. The boys that went sailing on Sunday instead of going to church didn't drown for their wickedness, but he nearly does trying to stop them. The dog he saves attacks him. In the end he gets blown up into multiple pieces and isn't even able to deliver a Bible passage before dying or make any kind of lasting impact. His obsession with good works and Holier Than Thou attitude isn't just ineffective but literally gets him killed.
- Ender's Game is a deconstruction of the Kid Hero and Invincible Hero. By the time the book ends Ender abandons Earth forever, has killed all but one of a decidedly non-hostile species that accidentally antagonized humanity before they realized we were sentient, doesn't hook up with his love interest (because, you know, he doesn't get one) and had his ass handed to him psychologically. Oh, and he accidentally killed two fellow students but was never told about it, but he's smart enough to suspect it and feel guilty.
- Dan Abnett also deconstructed The Smart Guy in his Warhammer 40,000: Eisenhorn trilogy. Eisenhorn's savant, Ueber Aemos, is the walking databank he is because of a "meme-virus" he acquired that gives him a compulsion to keep gathering knowledge, culminating in memorising the entirety of the Malus Codicum and summoning a daemon in an attempt to protect Eisenhorn.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Diper Överlöde: Sebastian Sleeves is a deconstruction of the Reclusive Artist. He is a rock star living in luxurious isolation and just waiting to serve as a potential source of wisdom and advice to younger musicians. He spent so much money on his Big Fancy House that, after the end of his music career, he had to sell all of his other luxury items to maintain the house. That money ran out too after a while, so his water and electricity got shut off years, if not decades, ago. His advice to Rodrick and the others boils down to getting out of the music business before they end up like him. He does make a comeback at the end of the book, though.
- Hannibal: Mason Verger deconstructs the Sole Survivor of a Serial Killer's victims. Usually, said survivor is a sympathetic figure who might go on to help the heroes and even face their former assailant in the dining, with even the worst of them usually being a case of Revenge Before Reason. Verger, by contrast, was a terrible person long before he met Hannibal (he was sentenced to court mandated therapy with Lecter after using his money and connections to escape justice for child molestation) and his hatred of Hannibal is entirely out of slighted pride. Additionally, Verger never gets a climactic confrontation with Hannibal, despite going to great lengths to set one up - instead, Lecter leaves him at the mercy of his sister Margot Verger, who murders him with his pet eel for the lifetime of abuse she suffered.
- Joe Golem and the Drowning City has Simon Church, a deconstruction of the Gentleman Adventurer. He's cunning, sharp-witted and cultured, but it's made abundantly clear that is all a facade to hide the massive emotional trauma he carries from slowly losing all his partners, family and friends during his adventures. Essentially Church's a Gentleman Adventurer whose adventuring days left the gentleman as an empty, suicidal emotional husk.
- Dune deconstructs many hero tropes within the first book starting with Paul Atreides as an example of what happens when the Chosen One comes about too early and plays up the Messianic Archetype card (largely through Becoming the Mask) to achieve his goals for revenge. That being a Chosen One also gifts him with an ability that completely destroys his life through clairvoyance. The rest of the characters in the story are often used to pick apart the very characteristics that would be necessary for a person to embody the tropes, and just how self-destructive they can be.
- Harry Potter:
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Relationship Sue: Cho Chang is introduced as Harry's ideal match - she's pretty, popular, kind and loves the same things he does. When Harry actually tries to date her...he finds out they're incompatible and they don't work out. The main lesson here is that a relationship can't be based on someone being the metaphorical perfect match - especially if neither party hasn't got a clue how to actually make a romance work. At the same time, it also spells out that circumstances beyond either party's control could interfere with any attempts of romance. By this point, Cho was still grieving for Cedric, her former beau while Harry has been dealing with character attacks on him due to the widespread denial over Voldemort returning and his witnessing Cedric's death. - The Chosen One: Harry's status as the chosen one wasn't decided by fate. It happened because Voldemort thought it was fate and attempted to Screw Destiny by killing Harry’s parents and attempting to kill Harry, which ironically made Harry one of his Hocruxes and gave him the protection to prevent Voldemort from ever killing him. It’s also made clear that Harry's status could have been given to somebody else; when Harry first learns about the prophecy, Dumbledore tells him that the conditions of who the “chosen one” is (a baby born at the end of July and whose parents escaped Voldemort three times and lived to tell the tale) meant that Neville Longbottom could have been it instead. Moreover, while he's competent and as prodigal as his adversary in Magic, he is still a schoolboy with a large experience gap with Voldemort (who is described as one of the most powerful dark wizards in wizarding history). His heroic actions do save lives but, until near the end of the series, they don’t bring him glory - they end up being used by the general public to label him as "reckless" and "unstable". Harry ultimately defeats Voldemort not because of his superior talent, but because Voldemort makes several major mistakes and is arguably brought down by his own blindness and arrogance.
- Bad Boss: Voldemort is so obsessed with punishing the subordinates who he considers weak that the first time he fell from power, they immediately disowned any association with him. Harry, on the other hand, is willing to befriend and be loyal to his allies, which means that they are willing to fight and die for him, and for the most part they stick to Harry, no matter what. During the final battle, his Death Eaters started to outright abandon Voldemort while those loyal to Harry continued to fight on despite Anyone Can Die being in effect. The death of Bellatrix, his only remaining loyal underling, caused Voldemort to lose his collective shit, and sure enough, when Harry finally kills him, nobody is left to support or fight for Voldemort.
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- Stormfur from Warrior Cats is a deconstruction of Mighty Whitey. He's a cat from the main group in the series who gets discovered by the Tribe of Rushing Water, a group with strange customs, and finds out that he's The Chosen One destined to save them, and even gets to date a native she-cat, and eventually chooses to stay with the tribe. Plus he gets to train the tribe cats in his fighting skills to later save them from some rogues who they're utterly helpless against without him. But not only is he not really The Chosen One, but his strategy only ends up failing and leading to the deaths of many tribe cats rather than saving the tribe like he believed it would, and once he finally gets to come back and make up for everything by saving them for real he and the other cats realize that, however they want to defend the tribe, they don't want to force their culture on them or constantly be their rescuers.
- Pride and Prejudice:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents. Mrs Bennet's unsubtle attempts to match-make her daughters are mortifying to her two oldest daughters and she frequently encouraged the same embarrassing behavior in her younger daughters. Mr Bennet is just as guilty as he would openly mock and ridicule his wife and younger daughters. The consequences of their behaviour in public is a huge part of the reason why Mr Darcy persuaded Mr Bingley not to marry Jane. After all, what respectable Regency bachelor would want those kind of people as their in-laws?
- It also deconstructs Gold Digger. The Bennet sisters are greatly pressured by their mother to find a wealthy husband so that they can live comfortably after their father dies. The oldest daughter Jane genuinely falls in love with a rich man Mr Bingley but due to her snobbish mother's efforts and the fact that Jane is a "love you and everyone else" kind of person, Mr Bingley's friend Mr Darcy mistakenly believes that Jane is a Gold Digger and doesn't actually love Mr Bingley.
- The second oldest daughter Elizabeth recognizes how destructive the Gold Digger mindset is. But she eventually comes to a compromise. She won't marry a poor man but she would only marry a rich man if she falls in love with him. Her intentions are genuine when she actually shies away from the rich but snobbish Mr Darcy. It takes several events, including a polite trip to his beautiful estate and hearing how his servants heap praises about him and saving her family from eternal disgrace to make Elizabeth to consider letting him court her.
- The effects of a Bratty Teenage Daughter through Lydia in particular are shown. Most of her behaviour stems from the fact her mother spoils her and enforces the obsession to marry and her father leaves her to her own devices rather than educate her properly. All of this leads to Lydia eloping and running away with Wickham and nearly ruining the reputation of the rest of her sisters, not understanding or acknowledging the consequences of her actions.
- The character of Felix, who appears in two different novels by John Steakley (Armor and Vampires, which are set in different worlds) deconstructs two types of Invincible Hero:
- Vampires demolishes The Gunslinger by providing Felix with Improbable Aiming Skills and making him incapable of missing a shot. The deconstruction is that the ability to never miss a shot makes him unable to shoot non-fatally — if there is a Hostage Situation, for example, he will always Shoot the Hostage (and kill them) in order to get a clean shot at the hostage-taker. He also cannot ever "shoot to wound" — it's Boom, Headshot! or nothing.
- Armor makes him a One-Man Army and Powered Armor-wearing killing machine. The problem here is that his mind becomes so badly screwed up by how much War Is Hell that he eventually creates a Split Personality called "The Machine" that has as its first priority surviving at any cost (including tossing fellow soldiers to the wolves), not to mention that the bean-counters cannot believe that he was capable of surviving so many confrontations (when entire battalions did not) and thus the bureaucracy treats him as Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder. Both versions of Felix are understandably horrified by the brutality that these abilities (and the circumstances in which they come in handy) had forced him to partake in.
- The Berenstain Bears and the Drug Free Zone deconstructs the Kid Detective. The Bear Detectives are concerned about drugs showing up in Bear Country and try to catch the drug dealers. Unfortunately, being kids and not actual trained detectives, they jump to conclusions such as thinking Raffish Ralph or a trenchcoated stranger (actually an undercover police officer) were involved with drug dealing. Cousin Fred even lampshades that catching drug dealers isn't like finding a missing pumpkin or missing dinosaur bonenote . Even the police chief repeats that same point and tells the detectives that investigating serious crimes like drugs should be left to police and not to amateur detectives.
- The Collector: Abduction Is Love is brutally deconstructed by showing that Frederick's actions of abducting Miranda and forcing her to live in a Gilded Cage doesn't actually make Frederick sympathetic or cause Miranda to fall in love with him. Throughout the novel, Frederick is portrayed as socially inept yet intensely obsessed with Miranda and does and says whatever he thinks will make her happy. The first part of the novel makes Frederick seem reasonable and that Miranda will come around eventually due to it being written from his perspective. We actually see Miranda's perspective in the second part, showing that she's scared of him and yet is grateful because she's so lonely due to the isolation. Miranda eventually grows to despise Frederick when it gradually becomes clear that he has no intention of letting her go.
- Socially Awkward Hero also gets deconstructed. Frederick's narration makes him seem like a kind but awkward person who seems nice enough despite his shyness around Miranda. Frederick's social ineptitude and awkwardness in actually serves to make him creepier because it's also tinged with sexism in that he considers her perfect while putting down other women. As the story progresses, its clear that Frederick is actually someone undergoing a Big Bad Slippage and by the end, he's become a full blown Villain Protagonist.
- Sex–Face Turn: Miranda tries to seduce Frederick by having sex with him, hoping that she'll gain power over him by convincing him to let her go free from the Gilded Cage he's kept her in. Due to his inability to have sex, and his view of her being shattered due to his misogyny, he loses all respect for her and makes her the subject of degrading photos against her will.
- In The King's Avatar:
- Satellite Character is deconstructed in-universe. When Ye Xiu was with Excellent Era, Su Mucheng's playstyle revolved around working with him, with the two of them even getting the Best Partner achievement awards for four consecutive years. But when Ye Xiu was forced to retire, she had to adapt to a completely different style with new team captain Sun Xiang who does not fight the same way as Ye Xiu. This is one of the many reasons why she leaves Excellent Era to join Happy.
- Tang Rou is a Determinator/Blood Knight; she will continue to fight and request rematches despite losing but she will consistently challenge pro players who have far more experience than her and continually defeat her more times than she can defeat them. Ye Xiu flat out tells her that this mindset isn't always good.
- The titular character of Stargirl deconstructs Cloudcuckoolander. She's a peppy and very weird New Transfer Student. Instead of people being endeared by her, she sticks out like a sore thumb because of having No Social Skills and several of her attempts to help out people actually make things worse because she doesn't have the tact to make sure her actions are actually appropriate for the situation; both of those things eventually gets her ostracized from the entire school.
- Kyra, the titular Goth girl in The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl is this for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Like most MPDG, she is a quirky Implied Love Interest who often encourages the male lead to join in on her shenanigans. However, said shenanigans are illegal at best and self-destructive at worst, which causes Donnie to question why he hangs out with her.
- Lorcan of Brimstone Angels is a deconstruction of the "supernatural bad boy" archetype. He's the devil heroine Farideh made a pact with and they have plenty of (eventually consummated) UST - attractive, charming, legitimately less evil than most of his kind, has a tragic backstory that explains exactly why he is the way he is, has positive qualities that show through at odd but critical moments, has perfectly good reasons for why he needs to stay in Fari's life. And, at the end of the day, none of that changes that he's an overall terrible person and toxic influence in Farideh's life and rather than her love redeeming him, she ends up cutting ties with him at the end of the series and is better off for it.
- Otaku Girl presents the question of what would happen if an actual girl gets to live the life of a female anime character. In a medium filled with ecchi and rape comedy, living an anime life is not as fun as it seems, even being more dangerous.
- The Frozen Tie-In Novel A Frozen Heart:
- Prince Charmless is deconstructed through Hans, exploring how a horrible childhood in an abusive royal family that emphasized violence over genuine care slowly turns him into a bitter man who thinks Love Is a Weakness. This leaves him clueless on what normal relationships would be, having personally witnessed the dysfunction in his family. Even as he's being sent back home, he is left baffled on how the sisters reconciled with each other, while he and his brothers won't have any opportunity, as their father abhors such actions. Hans also remains friendless, as while he does get along with his mother and only one of his brothers, they're too distant to intervene when he needed help. Also, once Hans decided to become his father's gofer, he detached himself from his mother, knowing that his father would mock him even more for being a weakling.
- Hans's father, the king of the Southern Isles, deconstructs the Abusive Parents trope. Encouraging Social Darwinism in his large family, he demands his 13 sons be ruthless so they'll carry the masculine image he projects himself. He also deliberately plays favorites among them, leading to fierce competition between his sons for his approval. However, the king's hands-off parenting has left his entire family dysfunctional, and he even represents what a parent should not be.
- Sherlock Holmes: Professor Moriarty, Holmes' Arch-Enemy, deconstructs the Impossible Genius. His last book, "The Dynamics of an Asteroid", is so difficult that nobody in the scientific press can criticize it. This work means the end of Moriarty's scientific career: in a world without computers, nobody can prove or disprove his theories, and Moriarty realizes that further mathematical investigation is meaningless because there is literally no other human being who can understand it. His genius is so great that it makes him Powerful and Helpless. Is it any wonder that Moriarty decides to concentrate on other activities, like being a Diabolical Mastermind?
- The Hunger Games: The protagonist Katniss Everdeen is this to The Chosen One and the Icon of Rebellion — and, by extension, an Unbuilt Trope version of many protagonists of dystopian young adult novels, many of whom are teenage girls and young women who are thrust into rebellions and emerge as the leaders. Katniss is not special; she's an ordinary country girl with some survival skills, but long-shot odds and no indication that she'd win against contestants who've been training for the Games all their lives. She is elevated into a symbol of resistance by the actions she performs before and during the Games, actions that thrust her into plots beyond her control as the resistance seeks to use her to incite rebellion. This extends to the books' deconstruction of La Résistance, as a lot of detail, especially in Mockingjay, is given over to how the rebellion is trying to win people over to their cause. The important part is that Katniss' position as an icon of rebellion is conferred on her by the people, not by destiny, a special bloodline, or any superiority — which ultimately makes her a Supporting Protagonist in the broader story of the rebellion, as she only plays one small part in the final siege of the Capitol in Mockingjay. This video
by Just Write goes into more detail. - Early in Oathbringer, the third book of The Stormlight Archive, Shallan and Adolin discuss soldiers. Adolin claims that the ideal soldier is someone who doesn't get involved in petty politics, and just fights for honor and the joy of battle. Shallan nods, and wonders what kind of a soldier wouldn't care about why they fight. Cue flashbacks to Dalinar, Adolin's father, who brutally deconstructs Adolin's ideals. Dalinar in his prime didn't care about the kingdom his brother Gavilar was creating; he was happy as long as he gave him a battlefield to rampage on. When questioned about his motives, he bluntly tells an enemy king that he has no idea why his brother wants the king dead, and later admits that all he knows about politics is that Gavilar wanted something, so he had to go and kill lots of people to get it. Once Gavliar's conquest is over and their kingdom is founded, Dalinar is frustrated because he no longer has a place in a peaceful world, and turns to drink.
- The Great Gatsby:
- Love Martyr: Everything Gatsby did to raise and earn his ill-gotten money is to capture Daisy's heart. He idolizes the memory of the Daisy five years ago to the extent that he was willing to cover up Daisy's accidental murder of Myrtle. However, Gatsby simply cannot reconcile with the fact that Daisy is now a married woman with a young child and refuses to leave her husband for him and he expects and wants her (and in the infamous confrontation scene, forces her) to be the perfect woman he is obsessed with.
- Brainless Beauty: Daisy is not as vapid and ditsy as she appears to be and she is aware of how miserable her life is and she is merely playing the part to make her life easier. However, she still has moments where her childlike innocence and foolishness is a Fatal Flaw in that Daisy is unable to take responsibility for herself, whether to better her life or change how her actions hurt others.
- Idle Rich: Tom and Daisy don't need to work a day in their lives but they are chased by all sorts of unsavory people (conmen, freeloaders and Nouveau Riche). Without a job, they have plenty of time but are utterly bored and Lonely at the Top. Tom desperately clings to his Glory Days as a football hero because he knows he will never top that and frequently cheats on Daisy. Daisy is a Stepford Smiler trapped in a loveless, unhappy marriage and has few genuine friends despite her active social life.
- Nora Stephens, the protagonist of Book Lovers deconstructs Disposable Fiancé, specifically the "cutthroat and stoic business person who gets dumped for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or a more maternal woman" archtype. While she seems to play it straight with her appearance, in reality she’s a witty and smart woman who cares deeply about her family and the clients she works with in the publishing industry. Her standoffish attitude is due to lingering trauma from her mother’s death and having to take care of her teenage sister when she was barely out of her teen years herself. Not to mention that she’s Genre Savvy and it doesn’t help that her boyfriends play the trope straight.
- Joe Goldberg from You (Kepnes) and its television adaptation deconstructs the Dogged Nice Guy. Joe is completely devoted to his Love Interests and wants nothing more than to make them happy - at least, that's how he sees himself. In reality, he is a psychotic Stalker with a Crush with an extreme case of Entitled to Have You towards anyone unfortunate enough to catch his eye. It's taken to such an extreme that he becomes a full-blown Serial Killer willing to murder those who threaten his "happily ever after" with the person he's currently fixated on. Indeed, Joe himself is so Wrong Genre Savvy that he actually believes he's The Hero in a Romantic Comedy, and not the Villain Protagonist of a dark psychological thriller.
- Molly Gray of The Maid by Nita Prose deconstructs Adorkable. She is endearingly awkward to the readers because she has No Social Skills at all, which makes her as naive as a small child would be despite being twenty-five, a trait which makes her completely oblivious to the obvious illegal activity going on right under her nose, thereby letting a criminal make her the patsy for his crimes without her suspecting a thing. As well, she has no friends because everyone around her doesn’t understand how she doesn’t comprehend the social interaction that everyone takes for granted, meaning that she is often teased by others.
- Luo Binghe from The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System is a deconstruction of Gary Stu Power Fantasy protagonists. The original Luo Binghe from the in-universe webnovel Proud Immortal Demon Way was the epitome of a God-Mode Sue who rose from a childhood of abuse and scorn to become the handsomest and most powerful person in the world who kills or humiliates everyone who ever wronged him, sexes up every woman he meets into joining his hundreds-strong harem, and has a long list of absurdly overpowered abilities related to his half-demon heritage and an Infinity +1 Sword only he can control that he uses to bring the entire human and demon realms under his heel. However, when Shen Yuan, a Caustic Critic of Proud Immortal Demon Way, is transmigrated into its world, his expectations that the Luo Binghe he meets will grow up to be the same invincible power fantasy protagonist from the novel blind him from seeing that this Luo Binghe, even after gaining many of the same overpowered abilities from the novel, is actually a deeply lonely and broken man who has massive abandonment and self-esteem issues from all the suffering he had to go through to become powerful and what he truly desires isn't a harem of women or world conquest but to be loved and accepted which he can't effortlessly gain even with all his powers. And that Infinity +1 Sword his novel self used to conquer everyone? He can't control it nearly as well in this timeline due to his aforementioned abandonment and self-esteem issues being closer to the surface and it corrupts him into nearly killing the man he loves twice which leads to him ultimately destroying it.
- This deconstruction is reinforced in the extra story where the Luo Binghe from Shen Yuan's timeline meets the Luo Binghe from Proud Immortal Demon Way's original timeline and the latter Luo Binghe, in spite of disdaining the other Luo Binghe for his complete lack of a harem or sexual prowess, is shown to be the unhappier one who bitterly envies his alternate self for having someone who genuinely loves and dotes on him.
- Solomon Kane: Solomon Kane's Homecoming deconstructs the Knight Errant-style hero. Throughout the series, Kane has been built up as a man driven, almost to the point of obsession, to fight for truth and justice. However, in this, the last installment, all the trappings of pulp fiction are stripped away, and we get to see Kane for what he is; an aging man, broken by the horrors (man-made and supernatural) he has fought, who wants nothing more than to settle down in his hometown. However, his hometown is all changed, his childhood sweetheart is dead, and while the people will gladly by him beer for his stories, they don't understand. In the end, Kane chooses to go off on another adventure rather than stay, but this is presented not as a final blaze of glory but rather as Kane seeing his old home breaking him in a way that the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, pirates, cannibals, malaria, and run-ins with monsters, demons and the Great Old Ones note couldn't.
- John Shawcross, Villain Protagonist of “The Moral Virologist”, is a deconstruction of the Mad Scientist. He makes a Synthetic Plague to cause vast destruction and make society submit to his whims, so you think he’s some kind of Übermensch who thinks he’s more highly evolved than us, right? Nope. Exactly the opposite is true: he doesn’t even believe in real evolution let alone Hollywood Evolution, because he is a fundamentalist Christian, his plague killing off those who ignore Christian teachings on illicit sex. According to author Greg Egan, one who uses science for evil purposes would much more likely be that way because they already believed in a dangerous ideology that is incompatible with scientific philosophy, using it as just a means to an end, rather than science making people distant and totalitarian like the trope usually goes.
