Superhero vs Anti-Hero

So I'm trying to write a superhero story and what I want is to reconstruct the more idealistic hero whilst also deconstructing the darker and edgier anti-hero.

Here's the idea's I've had so far:

The hero wears a brighter costume deliberately, because she isn't trying to inspire fear, and because it should draw the attention of the villains away from any nearby civilians.

The anti-hero kills people, and even if they're criminals it's still unlawful killing. So yeah, he's regarded as a wanted serial killer. Plus regular people are terrified by the guy.

Well it sounds fine but I see no deconstruction here. Your description of both is pretty much the textbook definition off the concepts.

Well, that's why I'm asking if anybody has any advice.

Like I said I tried giving my heroine actual reasons for the costume, and her cape's designed to just come off if it gets caught or someone grabs it.

And deconstruction is when you play something straight and have reality ensue, right? So yeah, a guy who kills a dozen people a week would make a lot of most wanted lists I imagine, not to mention the tole it must take on his psyche.

edited 12th Mar '14 3:50:12 PM by PhoenixAct

A deconstruction of an anti-hero (by the way you seem to be wanting to take it) would be showing that his weekly killing spree is making his mind slowly break apart with PTSD and remorse, displaying what a constant life of (even if righteous) murder would do to a theoreticall normal man.

Another way of going about would be the opposite way. Showing that someone who does such things would quickly devolve into The Sociopath, and have his human empathy slowly stripped away from him as he suffers as Sanity Slippage.

Some combination of thereof would also be wonderful.

Other factor in deconstruction would be showing the anti-hero's motivation. Is he forced into his situation? Does he have a Freudian Excuse? Or he just wants to play the good guy, but actually a jerkass?

There would be also what kind of crimes he thinks he should punish with death. One of my work features nazi "superheroes" as villains, and some of them has a big Moral Dissonance when it comes to judging crimes, also there's a communist "superhero" who just kills people with no jobs. Mostly they're deconstructions of shonen heroes or rivals.

Reviving this thread because I've got a potential scenario in mind and would like people's opinions on whether it would work.

Essentially, the anti-hero targets a gang and eliminates almost all the high-ranking members in a short period of time, greatly weakening them. However, instead of bringing any sort of peace it makes things worse as the other nearby gangs start eyeing-up the weak gangs' territory; eventually a large-scale turf war breaks out.

And thanks to those who commented earlier.

edited 25th Apr '14 11:43:53 AM by PhoenixAct

That idea has a lot of promise and definitely sounds like a good Deconstruction to me. It makes perfect sense that the area would be thrown into chaos as other gangs rush to fill the power vacuum.

Now, I'm interested: how will the anti-hero react to this?

How about you deconstruct their personalities? In most heroic fiction we don't see more than superficial character traits. Why not give the hero good intentions but explore how, as you said before, all their actions really achieve is shifting loss of life around as opposed to outright preventing it? To deconstruct the anti-hero you could go into how actually fixing up the world and saving lives would turn you into a widely disliked person. Imagine if you tried to take out a sweatshop complex in Asia, for example, and kicked up the price of smartphones by a couple hundred bucks apiece? Morally, it's perfectly justifiable. But you'd be the most hated villain in the West by the next morning.

Um, I actually want to R Econstruct the regular superhero, whilst deconstructing the "grittier" anti-hero.

He'd probably decide the best solution wold be to try killing the other gangs, or come to the conclusion that them now killing each other is a good thing. This is a guy who has come to the conclusion that the most realistic way to deal with widespread crime is to murder the criminals.