Discussion Main / Deconstruction

no, only if it's on the subtrope's page.

They were "migrated to subtropes" in May 2016.

I was initially assuming for the "clarity's sake" reasons stated in the bold note of "this page being about deconstruction as a method, only for meta-examples".. But it's not really clear to me how 30 examples for each video-games and western animation categories are totally justified instead.

FWIW: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GenreDeconstruction/AnimeAndManga https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DeconstructedTrope/AnimeAndManga https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeconstructedCharacterArchetype#folder0

Formal.

Trope proposals go in YKTTW. I'll tell you this, the name is 100% not going to stick, and honestly the whole thing seems a bit of a stretch.

Oh, I wasn't aware there was a dedicated page for trope suggestions. I'll move over there; thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Might be a deconstruction of the idea of a Legacy Character; the odds of someone just having the right attributes aren't just going to happen.

But that's meeting it more than halfway.

The example is not a deconstruction at all - they aren't showing "how the trope would play out in reality", that is just a "dark" take on the superhero genre (and "dark take" is a frequent misuse of Deconstruction).

At some point, Mami talks about how being a Magical Girl will void you of a social life and how she's actually afraid to take on the Witches. The work page for Madoka gives a line from Homura pointing out the realistic measures of life. Not to mention that most of the tropes associated with the Magical Girl genre are being deconstructed.

I don't see it as a deconstruction in the sense that it's more realistic. It seemed ungodly negative to the point of unbelievability. Like Mami being so lonely yet she doesn't try to socialize with her classmates.

The make of the series also clashes with comparisons to other Magical Girl shows. The girls just accept the idea that witches are a natural occurrence, and spend all of their free time hunting them. In any other show in the genre, they know a villain is behind the attacks, and it would do little good to wander around waiting for them to strike, especially if the villain could spot "on patrol" and avoid notice.

Of course, some feel that a deconstruction can also mean "Playing out a trope in an unexpected way, even if it's not REALISTIC." In that case Madoka does that in spades. Does that apply as a deconstruction or is this a case of what gfrequency said? "There's a tendency to claim that any Darker And Edgier work is automatically a deconstruction to justify liking it."

Part of the problem is that the example is phrased badly. There are deconstructive elements there - Kyubi, for example, shows the kind of callousness that you would realistically expect from a creature whose business it is to turn desperate girls into child soldiers, and then discard them when they're no longer useful. The whole "be careful what you wish for" element makes the point that people realistically do not know what they actually want when they make a wish, and the literal interpretation usually conflicts with what they actually desired.

You've got it right. If anyone else is still confused, Not A Deconstruction goes into more detail about the differences between deconstruction and similar-sounding tropes like aversion, subversion, etc.

Pretty much. I think a lot of the examples on the page confuse having a darker, subversive take on a story with being a deconstruction.

Having played the series since its Genesis days, I'm trying to remember all the ways it shows what would really happen if a time-traveling dolphin were to fight aliens...but I'm drawing a blank.

A work that questions the nature of reality is not, in and of itself, a deconstruction. Deconstruction is when a trope brings (or is caused by) realistic consequences that the genre usually fails to address.

Sounds more like a subversion of it.

On the other hand, all this implies that a lack of realism is a problem. Something that needs to be fixed. Sure, that can be the case, if the writing is bad and the show you're watching or the book you're reading is attempting and failing to maintain a willing suspension of disbelief, but according to this trope, if something is unrealistic, it must be made more realistic to be worth our time. Even reconstruction carries the implicit message that escapism is bad and cold, hard reality is the only thing needed to make it better. We're talking about fiction here. Why criticize something for being unrealistic when it's often not trying to be?

Sometimes fiction supports very troubling morals, worldviews, and conclusions. It's good to take some works down, for one thing.

gfrequency,

Whether or not realism is good or bad is a matter of taste, and whilst some people prefer pure escapism, others like realism.

I don't think the trope itself contains the implications you ascribe to it. Again, the unrealistic idealism is ultimately required by deconstruction in order to have something to deconstruct in the first place.

I suppose it comes down to a matter of preference. What bothers me is that deconstruction (and subversion — the two "negative" forms of playing with a trope, as it were) are both misunderstood and thought to be, on this wiki, at least, inherently better, smarter, cleverer and more mature than playing a trope straight.

The majority of the examples given don't deconstruct — they just make everything lousy and it's accepted that this constitutes realism. I've never seen an example of positive reconstruction. Someone suggested that if a Police Procedural were deconstructed, it might be shown that no city is as crappy as those depicted therein — but The Wire is already listed as a deconstruction of the police procedural, and it makes things worse. If Crapsack World were to be deconstructed here, it's a pretty safe bet that it would still be a Crapsack World — but worse.

Example:

"Now And Then Here And There is a deconstruction of the Trapped in Another World story. The "another world" is a barren wasteland filled with genuinely troubled crazy people in power, child soldiering and exploitation, no magic to speak of (except for Lala-Ru's power), and almost devoid of water. Granted, protagonist Shu does defeat the Big Bad against all odds and return home by the end, but the last scene is barely hopeful or uplifting.

To put it in shorter terms: Now And Then Here And There takes the Trapped in Another World plot and fucks it. Hard."

How is this more realistic than any other Trapped in Another World scenario? And from Deconstructor Fleet:

"The second Neverwinter Nights and Knights Of The Old Republic were viciously tearing every Heroic Fantasy and GFFA trope to utter shreds and taking a leak on the remains."

This doesn't even say anything about the games in question.

Ah well. It's all fiction anyway, everyone has their own preferences and I've gone on too long about it already. It just seems as if it's been all but forgotten that Tropes Are Not Bad. Hence the apparent need to see them fucked, shredded and leaked on.

Now And Then Here And There sounds like a darker and edgier take, but I will stick up for The Wire, which really is more realistic. It's darker, but that's just Baltimore. It shows how real police work gets done, the political wrangling that affects it, and the details of the street level world it takes place in. It's a solid example of the Deconstruction.

I'll give you The Wire. True, it is more realistic. On the other hand, if you hear any troper on this wiki talk about it, they say it's a deconstruction because everything is bad. Not because it's in Baltimore, or because of the political influence on police work. "Bad equals realistic" seems to be synonymous with deconstruction, and this is partly what I find sort of irritating about the page. If "tropes imitate life," as is stated on the main page, why deconstruct them when they're already deconstructed?

Criticism is a vital element of deconstructionism. The abuse of the term on TV Tropes has become something of a running joke among the greater educated Internet population. I suggest cracking down on its usage here.

Bokurano's been removed several times for that very reason. It's just an extreme! Darker and Edgier mecha show.

I'm not sure. Bokurano took a look at what would happen if young kids really piloted robots, then makes Life Energy the robot's fuel and shows what would happen then. There are elements of deconstruction, just that they needed to be pointed out.

"While Wish Fulfillment and Escapism are undeniable parts of fiction, sometimes an author believes a specific fantasy of the audience is unrealistic and would be much less fun in Real Life than it is in fiction. This is where Deconstruction comes in."

I'm for getting rid of this part altogether. Telling someone their escapist fantasy is unrealistic? Might as well tell someone eating a piece of pizza that pizza has cheese and sauce on it, and some people are allergic to that stuff, so pizza is bad and everyone should stop eating it.

Deconstruction doesn't mean "if this trope ever, ever happens in real life, it has to happen like this." It's not a reflection of absolute reality. It's taking the trope to its furthest conclusion. It is an exaggeration—exaggerating the trope, but seeing how that exaggeration would play in real life.

As for the Playing With pages, the problem there is half the people who add Deconstruction/Reconstruction to the list don't understand it. They really do think Deconstruction/Reconstruction boils down to "trope occurs and BAD THINGS/GOOD THINGS happen", and they're wrong on that. So don't go to the Playing With pages to see what those terms mean, because most of the time they're way off.

The way I sum it up is this:

In that case the description and the laconic need an extensive rewording. They're either poorly worded enough to result in a nearly wiki-wide misunderstanding of what the term refers to, or — and this is how it currently seems to me — they really are saying that deconstruction means "trope is played straight in real life and bad things happen" when the main page points out that tropes often do reflect life.

There's a tendency to claim that any Darker and Edgier work is automatically a deconstruction to justify liking it. Deconstruction bothers me a bit because it essentially amounts to someone telling you that you should not enjoy this fictional trope or this fictional genre because it's unrealistic - which it is, of course. It's fiction. Escapism. It is not beholden to our rules.

That said, I would argue that Dragon Age is a deconstruction - certainly more so than some of the other examples given here. Magi, being extraordinarily powerful, really would be kept watch over constantly and be heavily restricted in the types of magic they were permitted to use. A hero battling the Always Chaotic Evil hordes and other monsters would not be likely to die peacefully in his sleep, and here it's simply enforced via the Joining. Given the history of human oppression, it's equally unlikely that elves living in a land dominated by humans would be revered as they are in other works. Other fantasy tropes are deconstructed as well, but it should always be kept in mind that the end product is an enjoyable work in its own right - not just Bioware saying "Haw haw, fantasy would suck if it were real and here's why."

My issue is often that claimed deconstructions are usually "you should not enjoy this fictional trope, because it would really suck in reality" by showing what come across as equally fictional negative circumstances, often cranked to 11.

For instance, in the Dragon Age Origins examples, I fail to understand what is it about being an elf that necessitates your civilization being crushed, being a dwarf necessitates most of your civilization being crushed, and orcs being inherently evil, makes it more realistic.

I would honestly think elves would be better represented by a civilization like China (or at least what my courses on the subject taught me). Powerful, isolationist, help up as a high standard by the other nations, but has its fair share of skeletons, and if other nations picked on you when abroad, they're not likely going to do anything about it)

I would say the dissolution of elven society thanks to a combination of racism and religious fanaticism on the part of the dominant race (humans) is fairly realistic, as it's happened often enough in the past between various nations and ethnic groups. And a society as rigid and isolationist as the dwarves would hardly be able to expect assistance from a world it's decided to shun.

But I agree otherwise. I like Dragon Age because it's entertaining, not because elements of it are dark or realistic. I feel the entire concept of deconstruction is mostly sort of elitist and misguided, basically taking an aggressively cynical stance on reality and then applying that to something that isn't supposed to be realistic in the first place, telling everyone they're less intelligent for enjoying it.

I chopped the Dragon Age examples down to, you know, the actual deconstructions. People seem to think that, simply because something is a bit Darker and Edgier than normal fantasy, the whole thing is a deconstruction. This is incorrect.

I don't think that the Dragon Age examples are deconstructions so much as they are subversions. Having the Church Militants keep an iron grip on the wizarding folk is indeed more realistic and would be a deconstruction if it was aimed at a work that featured a ruling class of church militants with a magic-user wing, but as a deconstruction of fantasy works in general it simply doesn't add up. The Elves too fail as a deconstruction but for a different reason: I cannot recall it being mentioned at any point that traditionalism or unwillingness to use modern technology was the cause for their defeat.

I'll wait a couple days before removing DA:O from the examples list to give someone a chance to correct me if I'm wrong.

Agreed.

Quite curious (at least to this troper) but why deconstruction has to be linked with real life? Why our reality had to be the rule for which the multiomniverse of Fantasy and speculation had be weight and judge? Is an effect that had kept bugging me for a while.

How could it be more wrong? Every single work of fiction, even the ones that are put "in our world" are in essence an alternate Independent Universe, just by the fact that the story exist in "out time" outside of our time line. Even if we only go for the anthropologic, socio-economic repercussion in the moment thereafter.

But what about the Discworld? The Middle-Earht? The Hitch Hiker World? Snowcrash and Matrix? Hell, just take Dresden Files or Wizard apprentice who had passable similarity to our own? The very essence of their world is completely eldritch of our own by the beginning of the word Magic and going from there, like a multilayered labyrinth that grows for infinite.

And yet we cry that Did Not Do The Research, That Reality Doesn’t work that Way or that it has acceptable Brakes of Reality? Seriously. Imagine that you travel to another planet and try to follow the same physic/chemistry rules applied to Earth in it, like say Jupiter? You would be dead in less than a Month. And far away of the Milky Way, who the greates Minds keep deluding themselves know perfectly when we only had photograph of billions of years old and far more hardcore speculation.

Yet when we discuss deconstruction is how it could work in real life? or Its unpleasant ramifications in our world. But is should be it? For each world is in fact a unique and very delicate biosphere, if of Infinite size and complexity and for and experiment to be done, to understand its parts and manipulate it, it has to be done in its own ambient, without changing it dramatically or the experiment is simply worthless. Then it wouldn't make the definition of Deconstruction as of know equally hollow, for its not playing by its rules, by its own configuration, but by what you believe is compromised your view of your own and forcibly put it in. Like taking a fish out of the ocean, mutilate to "fit" in dry land and then state how could the creature could not adapt in life and is in fact, quite useless for surviving.

Quite silly, isn't?

It's because you're confusing naturalism (a literary style that rejects surrealism, romanticism, and expressionism, focusing on the mundane) with emotional realism (which demands that the human consequences of the fictional universe's postulates must play out in a realistic fashion - namely, if a character is human, they must act human).

For example, a naturalist universe would reject superheroes outright. A pulpy superhero would have the superhero as a good man fighting against evil with his extraordinary power. A emotionally realist universe would take that superhero and speculate on the consequences that power can have on human morality and lifestyle.

But what is Human to de defined by the emotional realism? And if it so, why many complains of fantasy or praise for realism its not for its moral complexity and human character, but its technical knowledge and socio-political construction.

Even so, the morality of Human is tyed not only to its cultures, but the world it grew up, demostrated in the difference between a culture grow in a polar setting and one in the Jungle. Then take it to its extreme between worlds, where one is governed by spirits and gods, other is one in a thousand races in a intergalactic empire, another is hurled in a desolated planet outside the boundaries of sanity and another one is pastiche controlled by the Tradition, to name a few.

How can one define the Human characteristic in a enough practical way to be used anyother way as a empty label to the infinite myriad that fantasy and especulation allow us? And if we take it from its original source and put it in ours, managed by our own moral compass, should still be counted as a Deconstruction of the work itself?

Also thanks a lot for the narutal and moral realism. Quite educational 00. Nice day!

It's the third mostly, with a little of the fourth. I changed the laconic wiki description, since it wasn't being helpful and that's where you want to go for a concise one sentence description.

Something I've never understood: Going by that definition, how is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly a deconstruction of anything? Just because there is a con artist who is the "good" guy by dint of not being worse and having occasional flashes of decency, I never saw anything being held high and shown to be foundationless. It always confused me.

Then you should probably delete that example. You are free to so. Argue with Someone one on the discussion of the movie.

EDIT: And sometimes, you gotta know how a trope, genre, or ect. work in order to see you could deconstruct it. Apparently it deconstructs The Westren genre (Dont know anything about.)

I'd say it's primarily number 3, with a bit of 4, but 1 and 2 are more usually consequences of a deconstruction.

I'd say it's primarily number 3, with a bit of 4, but 1 and 2 are more usually consequences of a deconstruction.

I think the fundamental essence of Deconstruction is that it shows how bad something would actually be if played straight with realistic consequences. I'd go with 1,2, and 3.

I dunno, but it's completely missing the point.

Removing.

I respectfully disagree.

This is from here http://www.cracked.com/article_18741_the-evolution-fictional-characters-by-medium-5Bcomic5D.html. The detractors of this picture say "it's simply Darker and Edgier", but doesn't this trope go hand in hand with Deconstruction? If a caption like "Superheroes, before and after Watchmen, it would be a very nice, and very up-to=the=point illo.

Also it shows reconstruction as well. After the "Edgy" phase the superhero comes back but more realistic.

Darker and Edgier does not go hand in hand with deconstruction, despite what Watchmen has taught you. And the picture in question is just a stereotypical Nineties Anti Hero, not a deconstruction of anything.

Deconstruction is not Darker and Edgier, it's about pulling the loose threads of fiction. The Dark Age of comics misunderstood Watchmen, and simply tried to replicate its edginess instead of, say, deconstructing or reconstructing anything.

We should clean up the examples then, not change the trope's definition or name. A deconstruction can be lighter and softer than the actual work - a good deconstruction of a Crapsack World could show that such a world is either not that bad or simply unable to function at all.

I think the idea of darkness = deconstructions comes from perhaps the purest example of deconstructive literature out there, Watchmen. It is kind of the yardstick we use here for deconstruction, it's just that influential. It just so happens that its target, the Superhero genre, was so idealistic that it had to be darkened a lot to be realistic.

If someone were to deconstruct crime stories, cosmic horror, or some other inherently dark genre, they might be nicer than a regular entry - really, what city precinct has a murder rate like some of those shows?

That works for me. Although it's a fairly daunting task, as cynicism seems to be hardwired into the definition of deconstruction on this wiki. Just look at the laconic terminology:

"If this fictional element were real, why would it suck?"

Half the examples on the page could well be purged, as they're just examples of Darker and Edgier. Let's "deconstruct," for the sake of argument, let's say...Vomiting Cop. Under the current definition of deconstruction, that cop who vomits at a crime scene will be ostracized by his colleagues for his weakness, drink himself blind and stop vomiting altogether. AND THEN HE DIES.

You just have to cut it when you see it. The article's description is good. It's the tropers that are the problem.

I'm changing the laconic entry.

It can, if you make the characters Dangerously Genre-Savvy in a realistic way that breaks down the nature of the genre. If you just have characters snark at a straight story, it isn't. I think there's always a bit of metafictional awareness among the characters (or narrator, at least) in deconstructive stories.

For example, if the villain attacks the magical girl in the middle of the transformation sequence, that's deconstruction. If the villain rolls her eyes and says a transformation was a rip-off of Sailor Moon's, it isn't.

Check out Sailor Nothing, in which the eponymous character was genre savvy due to exposure to idealistic Magical Girl series.