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One of the central tenets of Fanfic is Fix Fic. A desire to change or explore the original content in a way that makes more sense to the writer, or that the writer felt was wrong or simply because their favourite Shipping pairing didn't get together.
This trope is when, instead of using the hammer of Fanfiction to repair, a fic writer deliberately and often lovingly smashes it to bits with a Deconstruction. They take aspects of the work to extremes or down a logical path that shows the faults therein, either deliberately or simply by pulling the loose threads until something breaks.
A Fan Fic writer may take the setting, characters, tropes, plots, or the genre as their target. In addition, the fic may directly deconstruct the original work or any number of of Fanfic Tropes, cliches, or elements of Fanon common to Fan Works based on that canon.
Note that while a Deconstruction Fic may well take a dark path with revealing the canon's actual Fridge Horror within, it doesn't have to be a literal deconstruction of the setting and characters like a Dark Fic. A story can still be a Deconstruction even if it's a WAFF or Hate Fic.
An example of a typical deconstruction in fanfic:
- The Alice and Bob fandom of a certain Teen Drama or Kid Com has a Fandom Specific Plot involving a one-night stand which causes a pregnancy. Played straight the pregnancy brings them together, their families both accept and help the pair through the pregnancy, and they eventually fall in love and have a beautiful child and live happily ever after.
- A deconstruction for that plot can take several forms: Drawing notice to the fact that Alice and Bob are only 15 years old, aren't in love, have school to deal with, and their family situations aren't conducive to taking care of a child. A discussion about what to do takes place and causes a rift between them, or the family kicks Alice out, or they force Alice into a choice against her will or they have existing relationships that are impacted on by the pregnancy. The stress, guilt and angst continue to the point Alice and Bob end up hating each other with the one-night stand and it's aftermath a regret, and never to be repeated again.
A Deconstruction can still have a perfectly happy ending. In the deconstruction above Alice and Bob could work through their angst and stress and come to terms with what happened, and eventually they do come to love each other for each other, and not because they happened to have a baby together.
Deconstruction Crossover is a common form of this and examples of that should go there. Take care to remember the differences between this and Fix Fic, especially if the work the fic springs from is a member of the Deconstructor Fleet.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Axis Powers Hetalia:
- Bleach:
- Code Geass sequel fics are fond of tearing down the epilogue of R2 by showing the realistic political consequences of the power vacuum Lelouch left in his wake.
- The Sum Of Our Choices
 deconstruct the idea of a successful Black Rebellion by the fact that a lot of self-declared governments-in-exile wants a piece of the new government by Zero and he having to deal with vengeful Japanese and social unrests after Britannia's withdraw. Also, it deconstructs the Britannian politics, by having the EU taking advantage of the incoming crysis due to the fact that Britannia shifted itself to be a sakuradite-based economy, thanks to the reserves in Japan.
- Digimon: The fanfic community is in love with this. Here's some examples:
- Zero 2 A Revision deconstructs the whole Digimon Adventure 02 series, as well the Marty Stu Original Character.
- Zero 2 Housemates deconstructs the "happy ending" Distant Finale of Digimon Adventure 02.
- Zero 2 Battle of the Shinobi deconstructs the Proud Warrior Race Guys.
- Walkabout deconstructs Daisuke Motomiya's Butt Monkey and Idiot Hero status.
- Yolei: Rise, Learn, Grow deconstructs the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule the Digidestined had in 02.
- Caring Hearts deconstructs Hikari Yagami's The Chick and The Messiah status.
- Davis's Tears deconstructs True Companions and the Kid Hero. If it isn't united then it's only a matter of time before they'll be crushed by the enemy, and the kid hero is just a Child Soldier with some special powers. Without them he'll end up just like any soldier on the frontlines.
- Davis's Pain deconstructs The Power of Friendship, Gennai's The Obi-Wan status and Mummymon's Harmless Villain status. The power of friendship are sometimes not enough to defeat extremely strong and totally ruthless enemies, specially if the True Companions are in a semi-civil war, and Mummymon is only "harmless" because he lacks self-confidence, but once Oikawa let him to be in charge for a while, his self-confidence boost itself up and then he shows off what a dangerous, sadistic psychopath he actually is.
- Fate/stay night:
- I Put On My Robe And Wizard Hat is another of those Deconstructive Affectionate Parody fics that go through periods of popularity. Re-imagining Shiruo as a child of the chan boards is only the beginning. Apostles In Leather Pants, the sequel, does Tsukihime.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Naruto has notable examples:
- Jeconais' The banishment of Uzumaki Naruto in which the often pulled fan trope of the town council being a powerful force grinding Naruto down is skewered, and Danzo's pet project gets rather nicely sporked as well. Notable in showing even an admitted Crack Fic can be a Deconstruction Fic.
- Uprooted takes the idea of Danzo getting his hands on our favourite Highly Visible Ninja... and instead of going the Break the Cutie route, has Naruto's own nature start a tumbling row of dominos that Break the Haughty Danzo and destroy ROOT.
- ''Yet Again ... with a little extra help uses its cracky, silly premise to mock too many aspects of fandom in general and of Naruto in particular to list here. The central Original Characters, for example, are essentially god-like beings playing Self Insert Fic in the Narutoverse. This gets lampshaded, mocked, and diced so many ways... and then writer Third Fang remembers to execute it well on top of that.
- We Are deconstructs the Fanon idea of a "clan reconstruction" law allowing the last member of a clan to have multiple wives (generally used to invoke the Tenchi Solution) by carrying out the idea of a "clan reconstruction" plan to its logical conclusion. The person invoking it is placed under house arrest until they produce at least two grandchildren (to ensure that the clan doesn't end with them), and are forbidden to get in fights to avoid risking death. Spouses are chosen for them based not on their own romantic or sexual desires, but on genetic compatibility to ensure maximization of offspring production.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion is itself a deconstruction, so Fics that directly fix it are, well, Fix Fic. But the fandom has many a trope and cliche to poke at and smash:
- Taking Sights by Lavanya Six deconstructs many of the Peggy Sue standbys of Neon Genesis Evangelion Fix Fic; it's Gendo Ikari who goes back to fix his mistakes. In the process he manages to make things worse for himself, both through not understanding why things originally broke down, resulting in his fixes just blowing everything to hell, and through the butterfly effect pissing on his plans. Going crazy probably doesn't help much, either.
- There's also Better Luck Next Time. Also by Lavanya Six, it is a much more direct slap to Effortless Badass!Shinji Peggy Sues.
- Arsenal is at least partly a vicious deconstruction of the Peggy Sue as well; we find a far from saintly Shinji who considers himself beyond the Moral Event Horizon and willing to go even farther that his father would for his goals. Interestingly, this is by Sage of Toads under another pseudonym.
- The famous Shinji and Warhammer 40K manages to be a Fix Fic and a Deconstruction Fic simultaneously. On one hand Shinji fixes a lot of problems, both literal and mental, and has resulted in the heroes escalating themselves to unprecedented levels. On the other hand, it deconstructs the fanon idea that Shinji being badass is going to fix the whole series; the enemies have also escalated, and while the firepower thrown around in the original series is nothing to scoff at it can't compare to one Angel killing tens of millions of people by bombing cities across the planet, another Angel used to unleash a Zombie Apocalypse on steriods, or rendering most of Europe completely barren within days.
- Nobody Dies deconstructs wider themes in Anime.
- The Open Door deconstructs Conservation of Ninjutsu and God Mode Sue, as revealed in the conversation between Ali, Rong-Arya and Toji: All of the new!Chaos troops get very good equipment and are all capable to near-God Mode Sue levels, but this is because they have to be; since Earth is still rebuilding post-Third Impact, the population levels are still low, so every loss will be felt more keenly than in a more populous nation.
- The Neon Genesis Evangelion/Cthulhu Tech crossover Aeon Natum Engel deconstructs Misato's Lethal Chef-ery as being the result of having lost her senses of smell and taste to injury, forcing her to spice up her food to the levels they are at in order to even taste anything. As well as all sorts of other tropes.
- One Piece:
- Pokémon: Fics playing with the franchise's "trainer and Mons power of friendship" motif are common.
- The Sun Soul more or less shows how dangerous the Pokéverse would be in reality.
- Poké Wars completely tears apart the sub-genre of Pokémon revolution fanfictions. It also highlights how lethal the Pokémon can be.
- Stuff like that is already prevalent in Pokémon Special Manga in which both Pokémon and humans suffer what can happen in the world of Pokémon.
- No Antidote shreds the Power of Friendship... and you may never look at your starters the same way again. Or any of your other Pokémon.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Magica Madoka Veneficus Puella deconstructs the typical Fix Fic expected for this fandom.
- It arguably swings back and forth between this and Fix Fic.
- Ranma 1/2: These tend to deconstruct the whole Gender Bender/shapeshifting, by overplaying the mental stress these put on the characters straight, and not for fun. Their over the top flaws from the manga (Ryoga and orientation, Ranma and socializing etc.) are used too. Usually this ends with a massive downer.
- The Key To A Successful Interview, another Sage of Toads work, takes the Beautiful Destroyer Sailor Moon route, with additional Troll Fic and Revenge Fic elements. Notably, it also gives Ranma and Akane a much better first impression.
- The Ends by Twoflower is meant to be "my farewell to Ranma ˝, and my condemnation of it". It rips the very things needed to maintain the madcap comedy of the series to shreds, particularly the idea that it could result in a concrete, satisfying ending.
- Dutiful Child by Luan Mao takes the "give the characters exactly what they want, in all its suck" route. There's an element of Fix Fic, but it's also a bitter breakdown of what kind of manliest man would result from Ranma's childhood.
- Sailor Moon has gained a few:
- Crystal Tokyo, the Crystal Spires and Togas utopian Future of Sailor Moon, is frequently deconstructed into a Knight Templar dystopia — famously, in I'm Here To Help. Neo-Queen Serenity, Sailor Moon's future self, is described as "cleansing the Earth's people of evil". That would be enough to plant Epileptic Trees, but then in the second season, the Black Moon Clan showed up, time-travelling antagonists who refused to be "purified" and left Crystal Tokyo forever. That just made removing people's "evil" sound even more like a euphemism for mass brainwashing.
- On the other hand, Beautiful Destroyer Sailor Moon goes the Satire/Parody/Pastiche shock value route, but somehow manages to do it in a mostly upbeat feel-good manner. Basically, if your eyes have scars from assorted unpleasant things you've come across online, this might actually help.
- Zero No Tsukaima has MANY stories that replace Saito for a more competent character as Louise's Familiar, from personality changes to original chararacters to even bringing other already established characters from various series'. The main similarity is that they're usually MUCH more powerful than Saito could ever be and manage to help Louise get a better image across from her nickname 'Zero'. Of course, this Fandom Specific Plot has a few deconstructions.
Comics
- Tintin:
- Dahlia Nilsson wrote An Evening at the Airport as a response to the way women are portrayed in Tintin. Herge has been criticized for the lack of female characters in the albums. On top of that many people have pointed out that when the women do appear they are clichés and are portrayed as castrating and unwelcome presences. She mainly focuses on the few women that there are. Jolyon Wagg’s wife and teenage daughter are given lines even though they don’t speak in the series. Bianca Castafiore and Martine Vaderzande are rendered intelligent and occasionally profound and Peggy portrayed as a bitter jaded woman who has to put up with her philandering and generally irresponsible husband who acts more henpecked than he actually is to get sympathy.
- DC Universe:
- The fanfic Inviolate uses Lex Luthor to explore a number of things taken for granted in the DC Comics universe, including but not limited to: why mad scientists are mad, why evil geniuses are evil, why so many of the last of their kind keep ending up on Earth, why villains stay villains and why despite all the extremely high levels of technology available in the DCU their level of tech seems to be at the same level as the real world.
Film
- Alvin and the Chipmunks:
- High School Musical: There are fanfics where after the characters have graduated at the end of the third movie, they go off to their respective colleges with no preparation for the real world. Scenarios like Sharpay getting knocked back from a theatre career for her attitude and something horrible happening to Troy are fairly common.
- Star Trek:
- A Glided Hook deconstructs the fandom the Mindmeld Gave Me Feelings and the Mindlink Mates aspect of Kirk and Spock Prime. The emotions Kirk feels are not his own, it drives him away from his relationships and abandons the Enterprise to be with Spock Prime, ignoring the calls of his friends and Starfleet. Spock Prime turns out to be Mirror Spock Prime, who purposely poisoned Kirk's mind because he loved and killed his universe's Jim Kirk and regretted it. Kirk ends up having to kill Spock Prime to be free of his control. And Word of God says Kirk doesn't end up in a good place after all of this.
- Star Wars: Fan fiction writers like to deconstruct the morality of the good guys, particularly the Jedi, the Republic, and their successors. A lot. After all, there has to be a reason why technology never seems to advance.
- This is not just limited to Star Wars fan fiction. KOTOR 2 is practically dedicated to this.
- The Dark Knight:
- The View Askewniverse: The Jay/Silent Bob slash segment of fandom tends to explore the dark side of what is generally considered a simple comic relief duo. Themes include tragic back-stories to explain Jay's outlandish behavior and Bob's silence, the realities of drug use/abuse, and the angst of being secretly in love with your best friend.
- And the unfortunate truth is that a lot of that stuff is actually true of Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes in Real Life.
- In fact, in Clerks II the reason Jay gives for the duo having been in prison is the actual reason that Jason Mewes had been in prison a few months before filming. He was caught with drugs after being arrested on "suspicion of mischief" which apparently translates into, "Driving around with a deployed airbag." Which, come to think of it, is hilarious rather than angsty.
- Sweet Home Alabama: Mine, All Mine deconstructs the Romantic False Lead trope by showing the consequences it can have for the false lead. While Melanie and Jake are celebrating their un-divorce, we get to follow Andrew immediately after the events of what was supposed to be his and Melanie's wedding, as he gives up the honeymoon suite at their motel and ends up not having anywhere to go for the night, gets drunk and then goes on their honeymoon to the Caribbean alone since he's already paid for it anyway. Of course he, too, gets his happy ending, but it takes a while.
Literature
- Anthem:
- Dragonriders of Pern: Fandom mostly revolves around RPGs due to a long-standing fanfic ban. They deconstruct the eponymous dragonriders. The fans see riders as soldiers due to their militaristic lifestyle. The minute you Impress, you can't back out of it. Dragons are really big targets for Thread, and the telepathic bond means that when they get hurt, you'll feel it too. If you're physically hurt, you still need to keep it together unless you want them to panic, die, and leave you a traumatized wreck. You have to oil and bathe a house-sized creature by hand, participate in several-hour-long drills with about two days off a month, and make/maintain your own riding gear from scratch. While they have reason to be idealized both in canon and by fans, dragonriders' lives are definitely not carefree.
- Harry Potter: As one of the biggest fandoms in history, it contains a lot of fanfic de-construction of Canon or Fanon, sometimes as a primary goal, and sometimes as a side effect:
- Harry Potter And The Nightmares Of Futures Past frequently points out how absurdly childish the characters, plot and general feel of the series are, as a side effect of its Peggy Sue plot.
- The Fandom's love of Peggy Sue plots have also given us two very different deconstructions to compare:
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. With a Harry hoping to invoke Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, how can it not be? Less Wrong ends up deconstructing canon by attending to details Rowling didn't, and then some.
- The Incredible and Angsty Journey of Rose Weasley, Girl Slasher! takes most of the tropes associated with Slash Fic in general, and Real Person Fic in particular, by showing what havoc — what hilarious, hilarious havoc — would ensue if a character in-universe ran around accusing men of secretly being in love with each other, occasionally insisting that their marriages are a sham, despite protests from all involved. She even has the idealized portrayal of gay love often seen in the fandom.
- Cracked.com's very own Cody Johnston wrote "The Silliest Harry Potter F**k Fiction Ever (NSFW)." It is the funniest criticism of the results of Rule 34 that you'll ever read.
- Engorgement shows just how awkward and irritating actual M Preg would be, by having Harry Potter get pregnant by accident. Cue media coverage, mood swings, fights, and strange food cravings. This sort of thing also apparently happens often enough for the Hogwarts rules to have a section on it.
- Redwall: Fic commonly attempts to deconstruct the Always Chaotic Evil nature of vermin.
- The Inheritance Cycle:
- The Storm Dragons is a well-written fanfic series presenting the world from the perspective of a family of Dragons, the eponymous storm dragons, and from Galbatorix. Turns the canon series on it's head, and worth a read at least once. Whether it is Deconstruction Fic or Hate Fic for Canon is debatable — it could be argued it does not so much turns canon on its head via deconstruction as simply ignores it to rewrite the series Transplanted Character Fic style.
- The Midnight Masque is also an example of Inheritace deconstruction, although it focuses more on the characters themselves than the actual plot of the story. Arya and Galbatorix, in particular, get a lot of this(although Roran's Day in the Limelight chapter really unravels Eragon)
- Wicked is arguably Deconstruction Fic for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Live Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A deconstruction of the "Peggy Sue is not Easy" version in Compelled. Illyria from Angel goes back in time in order to get revenge on Wolfram & Hart. It all goes seemingly well up until the villains start playing by the new rules like using guns the way the slayers have.
- iCarly: A ripe target for deconstruction due to the bizarre world the show inhabits, as well as the large assortment of terrible and constantly used clichés found in a community built mostly by tween writers.
- Glee:
- Hunting The Unicorn deconstructs Blaine's Knight in Shining Armor persona. Unlike many Glee fanfics, which play up the idealized aspects of chivalry, the author focuses on the medieval meaning of chivalry—which turns Blaine from a kind, caring, and chivalrous gentleman into a kind, caring, and chivalrous gentleman... with cripplingly low self-esteem, deep emotional scars, and a huge devotion to Kurt. In fact, he's so naively trusting that people constantly need to spell things out for him, and he has no idea about his stalker.
- Power Rangers: The portrayed characters as if the constant power losses, mind hijackings, and secrecy actually had the profound psychological effects one would expect these sort of things to have on a teenager. One of the more well known Mighty Morphin era fics, Personality Conflicts, starts with Tommy entering psychotherapy.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing:
- Final Fantasy X:
- While it wasn't avoided in the game, a lot of fanfics show just how much it would hurt to accompany your surrogate baby sister to her inevitable death, which everyone (including her) wants to happen. Not to mention how Braska's death was celebrated with a humungous festival.
- For the sequel, there have been a few fics deconstructing how Yuna's radical change in personality hides the pain she's really feeling regarding a good two-thirds of her life. In fact, Yuna's a popular fan deconstruction of the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Mass Effect:
- The self-insert Mass Vexations heavily deconstructs Angst? What Angst? as it generally tends to appear in self-insert fanfiction. Almost as soon as he realizes he's in the Mass Effect universe, Author Avatar Art begins wondering what's become of every person he's ever come to really care about, and about what they must be thinking in turn. At first, Art brushes off the angst under the pretense that he can head home via Virmire. When he tries it, it ends up not happening thanks to Shepard saving him at Virmire. After that, he realizes that he'll never see the family and friends that he knew for basically his entire life. Even worse is that thanks to the cover story he made to avoid suspicion, he basically can't tell anyone about why he's really angsting and has to hold the real reason for his angst in. As if that wasn't enough, Ashley Williams, the woman who taught him everything about how to use military-grade weaponry, a reasonably good friend of his, and one of the people he was trying to save from her probable in-game fate on Virmire was the one who died. He ends up locking himself in his room so the crew won't see him cry.
- Mock Effect derives a significant portion of its humour from pointing out the obvious and less-obvious flaws in Mass Effect. Highlights include the long elevator rides, creatures with acid for all bodily fluids, and how stupid Saren's plan actually is.
- The author mocks Bioware's soft science sci-fi while simultaneously describing Hollywood Acid, bringing the criticism full circle. Acidity is a matter of degree; an acid capable of causing chemical burns to a human, like 1.0 M HCl, can be six or more orders of magnitudes less acidic than -other- acids which humans are well aware of. Additionally, bases are also capable of causing burns, and whether a substance acts as an acid or a base frequently is determined by what other substances are about.
- Pokémon:
- Pokemon: Unknown Chasms rips apart many aspects of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. For example, it points out the Guild's insensitivity to sending recruits on life-threatening missions and underpaying them. Early in the story, one of the protagonists, Nick, receives nasty wounds from acid in Drenched Bluff, and Andrew (the main character) later makes it clear that he is not very fond of this. Also, Chatot, who was only strict in the games, is presented as a foul-mouthed Jerkass and borderline Complete Monster.
- Space Quest:
- Touhou:
- The fandom contains plenty of this, the piles of Fridge Horror regarding the nature of many youkai and their relationship with humans, as well as most characters being selfish, belligerent, and very much insane, providing a lot of material. A Bad End is a Dead Baby Comedy take on this.
- Touhou Tonari greatly deconstructs Yuyuko's Bad Powers, Good People in her backstory and shows just what kind of life she must have had and what lead to her eventuall suicide.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Mai's Ramblings which deconstructs the ATLA cartoon, fanfic in general and Mai herself as a character.
- Danny Phantom:
- Fairly Oddparents: Deconstruction of Cosmo and Wanda's failing relationship. Norm the Genie being shown in a sympathetic light. The Morality of the show.
- The Movie is a deconstruction of the very premise of the show. Timmy's 23, still has his fairy godparents, and is still in the fifth grade. If you had Fairy God Parents, why would you do anything to give them up? Especially when you can wish away any of the negative events that could happen if you do.
- Galaxy Rangers: Pairbond deconstructs the Mindlink Mates trope. Goose and Niko resort to it as a survival tactic as they're outmanned and outgunned by renegade Supertroopers, it skirts the finer edge of breaking Xanadau's highest law ("One's Mind Belongs To One's Self"), and Goose's background as an Artificial Human trained from decant Super Soldier makes his thought process very alien and disturbing.
- Kim Possible:
- Some stories have her clear "beat the bad guys, save the world" morality crashing against the intractable problems of the world, leading her to crack up or go rogue. Others have her Evil Counterpart Shego explain moral relativism to her.
- Another direction is to seriously address the sort of personality conflicts that would arise between someone as laid-back as Ron and someone as driven as Kim. In some cases the objective isn't so much to deconstruct as to set the stage for replacing the Official Couple with the author's Fan Preferred Couple.
- Legacy, a deconstruction fic mixed with Continuation Fic, showing how advanced tech and magic would change the world.
- My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic inspires deconstructions at an impressive rate:
- Superfriends:
- Total Drama World Tour:
- Candy For Your Thoughts. It started as a rant against events like Duncan breaking up with Courtney to get with Gwen but then it evolved to a very intricate working (and really funny) of how the events really messed up Gwen, Duncan and Courtney, instead of the way ended in the actual series. The fic, on the other hand, reconstructs the Replacement Goldfish trope (when applied to couples that just broke up) with Cody and Courtney.
- Transformers: Any fan writing from a perspective of "the Decepticons were right" can swing between this and Draco in Leather Pants for the entire faction.
- Ed Edd n Eddy:
- Forfeit shows what would happen if the titular characters still maintained their childhood problems well into the midst of their teenage years. Starts off with a fairly more moderate tone, but gets noticeably more darker and realistic as the chapters progress.
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