What does the term deconstruction really mean?I've seen it used in reference to Watchmen and Neon Genesis Evangelion in regards to their scripts many times.
like parody, only seriouser
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Deconstruction explains the way the term is used in popular culture.>Wouldn't it be nice if the world were like the TV Shows, Films, Video Games and Comic Books you love? I'm sure it would be! Because then you'd have superheroes battling outside your door! Only to crash into your house in the heat of battle, smashing through your television and killing your pet.>In essence, Deconstruction is Reductio Ad Absurdum applied to genre conventions/tropes/fantasies. Nothing about the trope (or set thereof) is actually changed, it is played straight. However, it is played straight without ignoring or hand-waving the potential real-life consequences/preconditions. Indeed, these consequences/preconditions are highlighted in gruesome detail, usually in order to take a cherished fantasy and demonstrate it to have negative and /or indefensible results or otherwise be unworkable. >Note that to be a deconstruction of X (x being a trope or set/s thereof), a work must both abide by and criticize X. Merely making things Darker And Edgier is not necessarily a deconstruction, unless the author is clearly criticizing that-which-is-being-made-Darker And Edgier. For instance, Warhammer40000 cranks all its tropes Up To Eleven and deliberately makes every piece of lore and all of the factions so GRIMDARK that the setting is an ode to moral nihilsm; but in spite of the fact that it clearly paints an unpleasant picture, never once does it seriously compell the player to seriously question whether or not they would truly want to be a badass Space Marine fighting tentacle-rapey Slaaneeshi Daemonettes by stabbing them repeatedly with phallic and extremely large sword-chainsaw hybrids. Thus, 40k abides by the tropes without criticizing them. Parodies can be deconstruction as well but they might just like 40k crank a trope up to eleven for the sake of entertainment without actually criticising it.
>>4175I see so one would just have to take typical tropes and make them from a realistic pov.In NGE's instance the old child soldier piloting a giant robot against aliens and all the trauma from that vs. the fuck year or how crazy a guy like Batman would be in real life via Rorscharch.Are they any examples of such in fiction or just other deconstruction stuff in general?
>>4178Ender's Game is a good example in fiction, and for real life there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
>>4178Exactly. Note that it's not just mean for the sake of it. It's often done by people who know a lot about the genre in question and do love it. It adds to the genre because other people will try to reconstruct it by accepting the criticism thus creating a more realistic, nuanced setting. Ideally you can still chose whether you want to write about kind Batman or crazy Batman or something in between.>Are they any examples of such in fiction or just other deconstruction stuff in general?There are a lot on tvtropes.Have you seen that Simpsons episode called "Homer's Enemy" about a very normal guy who has to work with Homer and acts like a normal guy would?Shrek is also a good example of an amusing deconstruction (read: parody) of Fantasy and fairy tales. So are the Discworld novels.The much hated film Funny Games (if you want to watch it, watch the original one) deconstructs torture porn by making it as disturbing as possible in a way that doesn't involve drills and weird chain reactions.
Funfact: FF7 was intended to be a deconstruction of RPGs. Everything from Aeris dying in ways that pissed off all of the fans that tried to find a classic RPG storytelling reason she had to, to Cloud's fugue-state amnesia was a subversion of some form of RPG storytelling. You can look up the writer's interviews on the subject. Somewhere. I read them in an oooold issue of EGM.Problem: Nobody took it as a deconstruction and 2000 grimdark jRPGs became the norm. (Which is totally not what happens with deconstructions all the damn time: Watchmen)
I think The Incredibles is a deconstruction that reconstructs itself.
>>4184If this is true. Mind blown. I can't find anything though. The Google does nothing!
>>4197Not that hard to buy. Aeris death in particular supports that kind of allegation. If you examine the game there are certain inversions of various RPG tropes (i.e. starting in Midgard, as opposed to kindly little middle of nowhere town that will inevitably get shafted).It makes sense as an argument but the execution of it and the fallout from it make it hard to argue that it was a good one.
This is a parody article but it does accurately show how deconstruction is understood in the academic sense.http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27794It started as a post-modernist analysis of language, and argued that language is really cultural concepts speaking through a collection of sounds that tries to pass a thought from one person to the other. they saw the limitations of language as a barrier to true unfiltered and unbiased communication, which is impossible.people started applying this idea of deconstructing cherished concepts to other fields. my bro is an architect, and he studied a lot of purely theoretical deconstructionist architectural blueprints where the architect was fucking with the basic idea of what a building should beso in fiction, it translates to questioning the founding concepts of a certain tradition (or TROPE for you fucking pathetic TV Trope visiting HACKS)like if you took a heroic knight in high fantasy but made him a homosexual, or, as watchmen did, took some basic superhero templates and made them less idealized.
>>4203 Fuck off FF7 was fine.
>>4216As a game yes. But dealing with both the fandom and the creative influence of it is something I could do without.
>>4217Its influence fades. It's been over a decade.
>>4203> starting in Midgard, as opposed to kindly little middle of nowhere town that will inevitably get shaftedso barret was the TRUE main characteroh wait, no, nibelheim also got shafted, but its shafting was only revealed after you were out of midgar
>>4217I don't understand why people fault a game for its fanbase (or anything for that matter). The game isn't influenced by what fans say or don't say about it. I mean if that is indeed what you're saying. As for influence yeah everyone wanted pretty CG graphics afterwards but I still think in terms of structure, story and gameplay wise, FF7 wasn't that much of a departure at all.
>>4221To put it simply, people start hating a game after some fans, because due to the actions of those fans they begin to understand the faults of the games more properly(and cynically), and thus the enjoyment of the game itself is lessened, as a counter-reaction to the fans.
>>4223Most stuff I see on various sites usually it boils down too "it's too popular" Nothing technical about it. Just hating due to hating. Now I admit FF7 gets way too much praise but the game was and still is good. It's sequels on the other hand seem like a mess.
>>4224I try to avoid that, myself, though I am but mortal. I think FF7 was a decent game that could have been really interesting, but decided to switch the central conflict up in order to surprise the player instead.