Deconstruction as a tool

I heard once that the best deconstructions come from the people who the genre best. I learned that most writers who use this don't really hate the genre per say but they reveal the tropes used in most fiction for seriousness or even silliness. Alan Moore didn't really hate superheroes when he created Watchmen (I cannot say the same for Garth Ennis however) but he created the story to show how superheroes can evolve as a medium. With that said I wonder how should most writers use this trope? There are tropes that I hate but it isn't as though that I am gonna dissect every trope imaginable.

"Eratoeir is a Gangsta."

Frankly, in my personal opinion, most writers shouldn't do deconstruction. You have to know what you're working with very well to make "deconstruction" into anything other than "smashing it with a sledgehammer."

As with most things creative, "The Rules" aren't rules because the Great Gazzoo in his crown of soda-can pulltabs and cloak of rainbow naugahyde looked down from on high and in a thundering voice said "These are THE RULES! break them at your peril!" whilst waving his glitter-besprinkled flyswatter scepter. They're "The Rules" because they've been found, over years or centuries of experience by thousands or millions of creators, to work pretty well most of the time. You need to know how and why they work, if you want to break or ignore them and still have your work, well, work.

edited 19th Sep '13 7:29:20 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I'm actually a fan of the genre I going to deconstruct (shounen, with some elements from western superhero comics), and I think those people make the best deconstructions who're actually the fans of the genre.

I think everybody should follow these rules:

• Threat the genre or tropes with respect! Without this, your work can become an insult towards the genre instead a deconstruction. While if you (for exmple

) deconstruct traditional gender roles, you don't have to be a fan of "Kinder, Kirche, Küche".

• Deconstruction doesn't equals downplaying. Eg. if you deconstruct The Ace, it doesn't mean, that your characer only can has a limited aceness, but instead you can make him/her a regular Broken Ace, who barely sleeps because he/she needs constant practice. As you mentioned the Watchmen, Superpower Lottery boty exaggregated and deconstructed in this story.
• Deconstruction doesn't equals subverting. It's not possible that you can do both things to a trope, or subvert an overused trope in the genre.
• If a deconstruction alreadily exist, that doesn't mean that 1. you can't deconstruct it again, 2. you can't show it differently. Deconstruction of the mecha genre doesn't started with Neon Genesis Evangelion, not even with Gundam or Matzinger Z. Also the said genre has at least three different reconstructions (Gao Gai Gar, Gurren Lagann, Rah Xephon).
• You not only can deconstruct tropes, genres, but also political ideologies, etc. Satires are basically deconstructions. But well, if you deconstruct eg. nazism that can lead to Unfortunate Implications: if you humanize your nazis too much, people who didn't read the whole thing can misunderstand your work as a nazi propaganda because they didn't read the part where the protagonist realised the horrors of a geonicide and the dictatorship.

That's a bit of a blanket, though, wouldn't you say? Someone writing a deconstruction doesn't have to necessarily deconstruct every trope in the genre he's working on, or even a majority of them. Watchmen still played the trope of people being afraid of superheroes with powers completely straight, and NGE still had its generic, nebulously motivated, questionably sentient alien bad guys that show up in loads upon loads of mecha shows without changing a thing about them. And those stories needed for those things to be played straight to work at all. One doesn't necessarily have to be overly familiar with a genre to deconstruct parts of it, just specific tropes (or maybe even a single trope) and how they work. Sometimes that's all it takes.

That said, I'll agree it takes a lot of finesse to be able to deconstruct a trope properly and consistently throughout a work.

I didn't say, nor was I assuming, that a deconstruction of a genre has to also deconstruct every single trope associated with it. I said, you need to understand the rules to break them. That goes for individual tropes, as well: if you don't understand why the trope became a trope in the first place; if you don't understand the how and why of its workings, you can't deconstruct it effectively. You can smash it to bits, but that's not a deconstruction. And if you don't know and understand the genre, you may well miss why a particular trope has become prevalent in it.

So yes, people who like (or at least appreciate) the type of work tend to do the best deconstructions.

edited 19th Sep '13 12:13:56 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I've got a simple rule for deconstructions. I don't necessarily have to be a fan of the trope or genre, but if I cannot write an essay on the trope, its origins, and its effects on culture that I would be willing to hand in to a college professor for grading, I don't know enough about it.

This means, for instance, one could deconstruct an extremely common trope they despise but know intimately through sheer common exposure (e.g. Damsel in Distress), or one they're willing to work their asses off researching (and I don't mean reading its TV Tropes page, but actually reading academic books and essays), but somebody convinced they can dismantle anime despite having only seen The Theme Park Version and hating "weeaboos" is obviously going to make an utter fool of themselves.

I walwys that that you needed to be fan of a genre to deconstruct it but I do know that you need to focus on writng a good story before you do anything.

"Eratoeir is a Gangsta."

I'm still not entirely convinced that one does need to know the ins and outs of a trope to deconstruct it, though. At its core, deconstruction is about showing the real life consequences of a trope or genre and is not about pointing at a trope and saying "bad". Because of this, I think it's the real world itself that should be researched more than the trope when it comes to topics pertaining to what you're trying to deconstruct.

For example, for someone trying to deconstruct the Mon trope, it probably doesn't matter whether they know that mons commonly evolve into other mons or even that some mons are sapient. All they'd need to know is that mons are creatures that fight for humans, and I'd say that's enough to write a deconstruction. Maybe governments have banned their use so they're used and abused in illegal underground tournaments on the same scale as the arms or drug trade. Heck, maybe the story's just about a boy trying to own one in spite of its powers to wreck his house and everything around him.

Don't get me wrong, I do think a case like this is a rather exceptional one and that people should most definitely do their research before attempting to write anything, not just a deconstruction. But I also know that's not always possible in the case of writers under deadlines, so I'd like to think that some can write well even without doing the research.

You have too narrow a view of deconstruction. It's not just about real life, deconstruction also denotes the pursuing the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded— showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. In other words, it's about exposing the inconsistent assumptions concealed within the story. You can deconstruct the idea of the hero by depicting a protagonist who displays every characteristic of a hero except that they are self-centered and insensitive to everyone around them. You could deconstruct the idea of a "Maguffin" by having every character pursue something until one of them finally obtains it, and it turns out not to be very important. That said, obviously any attempt at deconstructing a genre will be more successful if the author has at least a passing familiarity with the tropes that will be most commonly found in it, or how will you know what to deconstruct?

For me, writing a story as a deconstruction is a lot like a lawyer arguing his case by using loopholes.

They have to know the relevant area of law back to front, they have to find the loopholes within those rules, they have to point them out and they have to do it in a way that doesn't make the judge (the audience) think they're mocking the system.

When it works, they can set new precedents or highlight problems in the law that need to be addressed. When it doesn't, it just looks like they're being pedantic.

edited 19th Sep '13 4:27:09 PM by Bisected8

TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer

This. And also some deconstructions doesn't have to be all darker and edgier, sometimes it would be the opposite in reality.

I think both Madraguda and Devious Recital are right; it just depends on the context. Some tropes are complex rules and would require a good understanding in order to subvert. However, not all tropes are rules; there are tropes that are more like cliches and can be simply deconstructed by removing or inverting the cliche (Watchmen famously does this at the end). Deconstructing a genre's cliches should not be too difficult.

I also don't necessarily agree with Madraguda's comment that most writers should not do deconstruction. Instead I will say that only good writers should do deconstruction, because while I don't like bad stories, I am a really, really, HUGE fan of deconstructions and wish there were more of them.

edited 21st Sep '13 9:52:25 AM by shiro_okami

So I need to understand the genre in order to deconstruct or reconstruct it?

"Eratoeir is a Gangsta."

You need to know what the most common tropes are and who has attempted deconstructing them in the past.

Yeah, it all comes down to simply understanding the genre and tropes. The key is to play them straight, but to also show the implications that they contain, for better or worse.

It is very much a balancing act.