History GenreDeconstruction / WebOriginal

* ''WebVideo/SonicTheHedgehog2SpecialEdition'' takes apart the very concept of LetsPlay. It starts by creating a game that [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs gradually gets more insane and bizarre as time goes on]], adds a narrator who spits out random nonsequiturs, all while parodying 90s pop culture. [[{{Postmodernism}} Then it starts playing with the]] FourthWall [[{{Postmodernism}} by having the narrator get in a conversation with an in game character, and making it unclear whether it's the narrator or the player character itself who's talking.]] The final boss fight consists of the player jumping on the word "logic" while the narrator says "Check it out! It's the last piece of logic left! ...Screw that noise."

* ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' takes many first person shooter tropes and twists them. Everything from capture the flag, to why there are two bases in the middle of a box canyon with no strategic value, and [[DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist Respawn]]. Interestingly, the new series called ''Reconstruction'' is a deconstruction of the parodic nature of ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles.'' [[spoiler:Caboose is tied up in the brig due to his self destructive tendencies. Grif and Simmons face the firing squad after selling all the ammo to the Blue team. The reason that all the red and blue conflicts were pointless squabbling over an equally pointless flag and base is revealed to be a conspiracy by command.]] However, since that is a deconstruction of a deconstruction, arguably that makes it a {{Reconstruction}} as all the video game tropes are being put back together.

* [[https://youtu.be/kTzdYt1mrfU Ella's Emergency Makeover]] is a video that deconstructs the very nature of Flash makeup games, which shows the graphic and realistic depictions of the removal of 'unattractive' face features (mainly the braces), texts that body-shames and humiliates Ella, showing how Ella was physically and mentally saddened by it, and [[DownerEnding the aftermath of the entire ordeal]] with Ella deciding not to go to the prom because she feels like she isn't pretty and good enough [[AllForNothing despite the efforts]].

* [[https://youtu.be/kTzdYt1mrfU Ella's Emergency Makeover]] is a video that deconstructs the very nature of Flash makeup games, which includes the graphic and realistic depictions of the removal of 'unattractive' face features (mainly the braces), texts that body-shames and humiliates Ella, showing how Ella was physically and mentally saddened by it, and the aftermath of the entire ordeal with Ella deciding not to go to the prom because she feels like she isn't pretty and good enough.

* [[https://youtu.be/kTzdYt1mrfU Ella's Emergency Makeover]] is a video that deconstructs the very nature of Flash makeup games, which includes the graphic and realistic depictions of the removal of 'unattractive' face features (mainly the braces), texts that body-shames and humiliates Ella, showing how Ella was physically saddened by it, and the aftermath of the entire ordeal with Ella deciding not to go to the prom because she feels like she isn't pretty and good enough.

* [[http://www.digital-brilliance.com/necron/necron.htm This website]] deconstructs the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, specifically the Necronomicon. In essense it asks "what if it was a real book?" and builds from there, by looking for parallels between Judeo-Christian tradition and the Franchise/CthulhuMythos (The Old Ones = The Giants from Genesis), it creates the content of the book, it then asks "what kind of person would write about such things in 730 AD?", thus Abdul Alhazred is what the Koran calls a "Sabian" and what western biblical scholars call a "Gnostic" a person with religous views related to, but radically different from mainstream Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It then builds a comprehesive history of how it got from the middle east and into the hands of western Occultists, and finally makes the assumption that while, yes Lovecraft wrote about it, he got only the name and the the author correct, having never read the book itself.

* ''Literature/WellMeetAgain'' is a long-running alternate timeline on Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom. The story was intended as a backlash to all the timelines littering the site where the American Revolutionary War either failed or never happened and America stayed in the British Empire, and everything is rosy because of it. In this the timeline diverges visibly within a few years of the POD, and enormously by the turn of the 18th century, and here, it isn't rosy. [[NightmareFuel Not]] [[CrapsackWorld at]] [[WarIsHell all]].
* Another story on Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom, ''Literature/DecadesOfDarkness'', was written as an attempt to make a more realistic version of Creator/SMStirling's [[Literature/TheDraka Draka]] series, which the author saw as wildly implausible in how its evil, mass-enslaving [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra South African]] empire is able to conquer the world while everybody else clings tight to the IdiotBall until it is too late. In this version, instead of South Africa, it's the United States that becomes TheEmpire after a disastrous loss in the UsefulNotes/WarOf1812 that sees New England and New York secede and British Canada claim a large swath of the Midwest, leaving a rump nation that is dominated by the planter aristocrats of the DeepSouth. This national humiliation leads to the rise of a proto-fascist, white supremacist ideology that justifies conquering 'lesser' peoples in Latin America as putting them in their 'rightful place', with a string of highly competent leaders able to put this plan into practice. UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire tries to check their expansion spree, though [[TheBadGuyWins it does little good in the end]]. By 1933, the US is the master of the Western Hemisphere and starting to extend its tendrils into Africa, the only independent nations left in the Americas having all been hopelessly Finlandized. ''Everybody'' in the world is fully aware of how evil they are, and the fact that they couldn't put aside their petty differences in order to stop this monstrosity, instead letting the Americans consolidate their brutal rule in South America while they were distracted slugging it out in the Great War, is regarded as a tragedy of biblical proportions.
* Another Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom story, ''Literature/FearLoathingAndGumboOnTheCampaignTrailSeventyTwo'', viciously deconstructs several themes in alternate history.

* The ''Website/SCPFoundation'' Wiki, although beginning as a {{Creepypasta}} site, has largely evolved into a deconstruction of the UrbanFantasy genre, depicting a [[TheMenInBlack shadowy organization]] entirely devoted to capturing and imprisoning all of those magicians, psychics, and mystic artifacts that populate said settings, to maintain the status quo. It is made abundantly clear that this is for humanity's own good.
** And by humanity's own good meaning that the fantastical creatures that roam the earth are not only nightmare inducing but can bring forth the end of the world as we know it. Yet no matter how much effort the organization put in containing such creatures/artifacts the end result is tragically inevitable.
** Many of the stories also enjoy pointing out that most of the people working for the Foundation are ''incredibly'' messed up. Bright is suicidal, Clef suffers from ptsd and has a habit of lashing out violently, and Kondraki has a whole cocktail of issues, not the least of which being bipolar disorder. That last one is deconstructed especially hard in [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/portraits-of-your-father Portraits of your Father]] and [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/the-king-is-dead The King is Dead]]. In ''Portraits'', Kondraki's mental issues catch up with him and he commits suicide. In ''The King is Dead'', the higher ups have had it with Kondraki's incredibly dangerous and nonchalant treatment of anomalies, and simply have him killed.

* Who could forget [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpBGRA6HHtY this]] remarkable deconstruction of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros''?

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' Wiki, although beginning as a {{Creepypasta}} site, has largely evolved into a deconstruction of the UrbanFantasy genre, depicting a [[TheMenInBlack shadowy organization]] entirely devoted to capturing and imprisoning all of those magicians, psychics, and mystic artifacts that populate said settings, to maintain the status quo. It is made abundantly clear that this is for humanity's own good.

* ''Machinima/RedVsBlue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' takes many first person shooter tropes and twists them. Everything from capture the flag, to why there are two bases in the middle of a box canyon with no strategic value, and [[DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist Respawn]]. Interestingly, the new series called ''Reconstruction'' is a deconstruction of the parodic nature of ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles.'' [[spoiler:Caboose is tied up in the brig due to his self destructive tendencies. Grif and Simmons face the firing squad after selling all the ammo to the Blue team. The reason that all the red and blue conflicts were pointless squabbling over an equally pointless flag and base is revealed to be a conspiracy by command.]] However, since that is a deconstruction of a deconstruction, arguably that makes it a {{Reconstruction}} as all the video game tropes are being put back together.

** The villain finds that his victory: the hero defeated, entry into the Evil League of Evil secured by [[spoiler:his LoveInterest's murder]], comes at the [[PyrrhicVillainy price of his humanity]].

* [[http://www.digital-brilliance.com/necron/necron.htm This website]] deconstructs the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, specifically the Necronomicon. In essense it asks "what if it was a real book?" and builds from there, by looking for paralels between Judeo-Christian tradition and the Franchise/CthulhuMythos (The Old Ones = The Giants from Genesis), it creates the content of the book, it then asks "what kind of person would write about such things in 730 AD?", thus Abdul Alhazred is what the Koran calls a "Sabian" and what western biblical scholars call a "Gnostic" a person with religous views related to, but radically different from mainstream Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It then builds a comprehesive history of how it got from the middle east and into the hands of western Occultists, and finally makes the assumption that while, yes Lovecraft wrote about it, he got only the name and the the author correct, having never read the book itself.

* The Flash games [[http://tinysubversions.com/game/ywhtwt/ "You Were Hallucinating the Whole Time"]] and [[http://tinysubversions.com/videogamemoralityplay/ "Video Game Morality Play"]] attempt to deconstruct games that make heavy usage of YouBastard, such as VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine, by showing how such games often get their points across by [[BlamedForBeingRailroaded railroading the player]] or making use of [[ShockingSwerve Shocking Swerves]].

* ''The Witch of the Invalides'' tears every common power fantasy SelfInsertFic and Isekai trope a new one and then some by showing it from the perspective of the former love interest of the protagonist.
** To start, it shows that the mindset behind many male-dominated fantasies as not something to be lauded but to be reviled or pitied. The SelfInsert stand-in, Jayce, is portrayed as an amoral sociopath at best and actively malicious at worst and is the main antagonist of the first three arcs. His rise to power mostly involves imperialism, war crimes, and rampant human rights abuses, with the peace being enforced by a PoliceState. In addition, the male power fantasy’s undertones of fascism come to light, with many minorities and indigenous peoples actively oppressed and disenfranchised. The Imperial Center is mostly unaware of this, being where the heart of the propaganda machine is located

** HaremGenre takes one of the biggest hits
*** To wit, it shows exactly what kind of person would be a HaremSeeker, the lack of emotional maturity it entails, and how unhealthy a dynamic it would be if they ''did'' gain a harem. TheEmperor treats his harem not as equal partners but as objects, and the emotional depth of their relationships is shallow at best. Alexis recalls that he was always "busy" when it came to their emotional needs but when it came to their sexual ones "his schedule was clear".

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYetLKMTh8 This video]] by WebVideo/RackaRacka does this with the "prank war" genre of Website/YouTube prank videos, with a father and his sons carrying out an EscalatingWar of pranks that starts out harmless but very quickly turns dangerous. Eventually, [[spoiler:the father gets badly maimed and kills his sons and wife as a result -- and one of the sons [[TooDumbToLive still thinks it's a prank]] even after his dad has started shooting while wearing [[MalevolentMaskedMen a creepy pig mask]].]]

** During the ITTL 1970s, the two party system slowly shatters. But rather than leading to more efficient, responsive government, it leads to political chaos, as the political system has not been reformed to deal with the change. Due to a third party run by George [=McGovern=] and George Wallace, the 1972 election results in there being no winner in the Electoral College, leading to a political clusterfuck [[spoiler: that allows Spiro Agnew to slither into office.]] As the political and economic problems of the 1970s persist, new political parties form, but they create further confusion, since the winner take all system turns them into spoilers that result in unexpected and unwanted results: [[spoiler: Spiro Agnew, for example, becomes Mayor of New York because of the divisions between left wing parties]], and Harvey Johnson, a liberal black man, is able to become a Mississippi Senator due to a division between right wing forces. [[spoiler: In 1980, Donald Rumsfeld, without winning the most popular votes, manages to win the Electoral College due to this same political division between Democrats and the left-wing We The People. In 1984, he is able use this same division to get away with rigging the election and drive the Democrats into the ground]].
** ITTL, the US is able to win the Vietnam War, that is to say, secure South Vietnam's independence. While this does to lead to celebration, it results in the US government, secure in the idea of foreign intervention, adopting a more bellicose and interventionist foreign policy. [[spoiler: By the 1980s, the US is expending resources and lives invading and propping up anti-communist regimes, and Donald Rumsfeld's anticommunist drive is so lunatic, he alienates Western Europeans who want detente with the USSR, leading to the collapse of NATO]].
** Per WordOfGod, the sequel is largely a Deconstruction of hard-right Tea Party conservative social and economic ideas being put into place. During the 1980s, these policies [[spoiler: turn America into an authoritarian hellhole and international pariah under the presidency of Donald Rumsfeld. By the tail end of his term, his deregulation of the economy has done so much damage, the corporate figures that initially backed him support his impeachment]].
** The Christian Values Party explores the idea of a political party that claims to "govern through god" if given power. Their belief in Christianity is a shallow scam, [[spoiler: as they quickly align themselves with Rumsfeld, hoping to wreak benefits from his destructive policies. After Rumsfeld is overthrown, they use their ill-gotten resources to gain power, and turn America into a fascist state and kills and imprisons anyone they consider to be a Satanist. Their policies plunge America into open civil war, complete with the [=CVs=] nuking rebellious cities, and drive other states to secede from the Union]].
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNYetLKMTh8 This video]] by The Racka Racka does this with the "prank war" genre of Website/YouTube prank videos, with a father and his sons carrying out an EscalatingWar of pranks that starts out harmless but very quickly turns dangerous. Eventually, [[spoiler:the father gets badly maimed and kills his sons and wife as a result -- and one of the sons [[TooDumbToLive still thinks it's a prank]] even after his dad has started shooting while wearing [[MalevolentMaskedMen a creepy pig mask]]]].

*** The worst part? They can’t even ''leave'' Jayce without either facing social ruin or ''worse''. When Alexis escapes in the beginning, she has to face obstacles such as ostracization, slander, and [[spoiler: assassination attempts in the Faedra Arc]] while she’s trying to rebuild her life. Take away all the fantasy and political intrigue, and what you have is a woman fleeing her DomesticAbuser, who happens to be a powerful figure,

** The WellIntentionedExtremist and UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans are also viciously shredded, with many nominal allies turning against Jayce when his actions become more and more extreme and their victories are Pyrrhic at best. It’s also shown how the concept of a Utopia is inherently subjective (“One man’s heaven is another man’s hell”), with many different characters having different ideas of what a Utopia is.

*** To wit, it shows exactly what kind of person would be a HaremSeeker, the lack of emotional maturity it entails, and how unhealthy a dynamic it would be if they ''did'' gain a harem. Jayce treats his harem not as equal partners but as a means for sexual gratification, and the emotional depth of their relationships is shallow at best. Alexis recalls that Jayce was always "busy" when it came to their emotional needs but when it came to their sexual ones "his schedule was clear".
*** TopWife also takes a hit as it shows how much unrequited emotional labor it takes to reach that position, and how it’s simply a hollow title at best as you can quickly be demoted at a mere whim. Alexis, the protagonist and former TopWife of Jayce, compares it to being treated more like a favorite toy than an equal partner and outright calls it a pyramid scheme. The infighting and jockeying for this position is also depicted as a means to distract the women from realizing how abusive their mutual lover is.
*** {{Double Standard}}s are also explored, as it shows how unequal a relationship where only one partner is free to have other relationships is. Alexis recalls when Sella (one of the youngest former haremmettes and someone she considers a younger sister) posed a question about this to Jayce. Alexis didn’t know the specifics of his answer as she was outside of his study, but it ended with Sella leaving the room in tears.
*** The worst part? They can’t even ''leave'' Jayce without either facing social ruin or ''worse''. When Alexis escapes in the beginning, she has to face obstacles such as ostracization, slander, and [[spoiler: outright attempts on her life in the Faedra Arc]] while she’s trying to rebuild her life.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2SpecialEdition'' takes apart the very concept of LetsPlay. It starts by creating a game that [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs gradually gets more insane and bizarre as time goes on]], adds a narrator who spits out random nonsequiturs, all while parodying 90s pop culture. [[{{Postmodernism}} Then it starts playing with the]] FourthWall [[{{Postmodernism}} by having the narrator get in a conversation with an in game character, and making it unclear whether it's the narrator or the player character itself who's talking.]] The final boss fight consists of the player jumping on the word "logic" while the narrator says "Check it out! It's the last piece of logic left! ...Screw that noise."

* UsefulNotes/FurryFandom works frequently portray an entire world as furry. [[http://www.sofurry.com/page/16447?contentlevel=all I Wish I Was Furry!]] shows what would happen if we woke up one day and the world actually was furry. The main character is even a human furry fan, like is typical for transformation stories. [[spoiler:[[{{Squick}} And a plushophile.]] (It's exactly what it sounds like.)]] A furryized world, as it happens, is dark and brutal. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" and all that.

*** DoubleStandards are also explored, as it shows how unequal a relationship where only one partner is free to have other relationships is. Alexis recalls when Sella (one of the youngest former haremmettes and someone she considers a younger sister) posed a question about this to Jayce. Alexis didn’t know the specifics of his answer as she was outside of his study, but it ended with Sella leaving the room in tears.

** Per WordOfGod, the sequel is largely a Deconstruction of Tea Party conservative social and economic ideas being put into place, vs. what the kind of president Ronald Reagan. During the 1980s, these policies [[spoiler: turn America into an authoritarian hellhole under the presidency of Donald Rumsfeld. By the tail end of his term, his deregulation of the economy is so severe, the corporate figures that backed him support his impeachment]].