Deconstruction Fic in Literature.
The following have their own pages:
- Advice for Daughters
is a blend of this and Hate Fic for the first book in the series, Wither. The sister-wives' situation is portrayed as horrifying rather than romantic, and it also examines details of the setting that were glossed over or not addressed in the source material.
- Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan" deconstructs the Esoteric Happy Ending of the final Narnia book, The Last Battle, by showing the perspective of Susan, who is not only excluded from joining her friends and family in Heaven, but also has to deal with the trauma of being the only survivor of her family and having to identify their bodies after the train crash that killed them.
- The 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.
- The fic Lucky Number Thirteen takes all of the more disturbing implications and Fridge Horror present in the Fifty Shades books and plays them realistically. The results are not pretty. It actually doubles as a Fix Fic too, though, as the ending has Sharon helping Ana realise she doesn't have to put up with this and deciding to dump Christian, becoming more informed about how BDSM actually works, gaining a new friend in Sharon and growing as a person.
- 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 turn canon on its head via deconstruction as it simply ignores it to rewrite the series Transplanted Character Fic style.
- The Midnight Masque 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 A Day in the Limelight chapter really unravels Eragon).
- This fanfic, The Attempted Confrontation, deconstructs a good chunk of Les Miserables, from plot holes from the musical (Javert doing nothing but hunting Valjean then failing to recognize him as Mayor Madeline, Javert calling Valjean "24601" even after he would have gotten a new prison number like 9340 or something, etc.), and character flaws of Javert and Valjean that started from the book itself (Valjean blaming himself for things he wasn't directly at fault for, Javert's Lawful Stupidity, etc), and manages to turn the whole thing into an epic Snark-to-Snark Combat between Valjean and Javert.
- Not as Planned: The story destroys the cliché fan plot, where a modern girl falls into Middle-earth and joins the quest. This time, Elrond arrests the girl to prevent her from ruining the quest. That's the first half of the story. The second half is dedicated to describing how a whiny, immature teenage girl might fare in a medieval-esque setting without modern medicine, running water, or gender equality.
- Norwegian author Tormod Haugen's novel På sporet av Frøken Detektiv ("On Miss Detective's Trail") is a deconstruction of Nancy Drew as a character, particularly her status as The Ace. The novel revolves around an Author Avatar named Tor Haug who travels to River Heights in order to interview Nancy, but he arrives in the middle of an ongoing mystery and keeps just missing Nancy because she's off somewhere investigating. He does meet several of her supporting characters, though, and though they all assure him what an amazing person Nancy is, it's immediately obvious that while their respect and admiration for her is genuine, there's always this tiny little tone of resentment there... because while Nancy is overall a good person, she has problems relating to other people; she tends to make everyone around her feel inadequate because she's just that much better than them, she has a tendency towards Condescending Compassion, and she's blind to how often she worries and upsets her loved ones with her actions.
- Bequeathed from Pale Estates deconstructs the Soulmate AU Fic. Not only a Marked one is unable to have a sex life with someone else than his destined partner, there's no guarantee of a Perfectly Arranged Marriage at the end and same-sex soulmates are very much a touchy subject. Oh, and the main couple's major beef about their own arrangement? He's a forty-year-old man and she's barely fourteen.
Many spite fics have this in mind:
- Kiri Kiri deconstructs the fan and anti-fan perception that Bella is harmless and the "powerless" one in the equation, despite displaying attitudes that could be considered as abusive with what her romantic interests display. Just switch her species, without changing her personality and possessiveness one iota, and she becomes a truly scary creature.
- Better Loving Through Suicide hilariously deconstructs Bella and Edward's tendency to attempt suicide whenever they can't be together and the idealization of suicide they still have when they are. The happy couple have got the Suicide Attempt = Proof of Love so ingrained that now they do attempts on their lives as anniversary gifts to each other, even if they are now vampires, they work under the immortality rules of Death Becomes Her (so they had have lost pieces of their bodies on the road), and even after all the lost "pieces" such attempts still harm more the instruments they use on their attempts against their lives than themselves. Their relatives eventually tire of their idiocy and use that habit to get rid of them for good.
- Bella's self-centered obsession with becoming perfect and immortal and her disturbing willingness to abandon her humanity tends to be tackled and explored, with many authors pointing out that she could make a Deal with the Devil (or nearest equivalent) or that she could betray her beloved if another entity promised to transform her, and she would still be in character.
- The Elephant deconstructs Bella's character and motivations by making her the sufferer of a degenerative genetic disease that has a penchant to strike before the patient gets into their forties, a thing she sees happen to her grandma and mom and has manifested in her with her clumsiness. Suddenly, her considering 30 to be "old age", her incredibly fast attachment to Edward despite his admittedly creepy ways of showing love, and her willingness to throw away her humanity in exchange for the physical perfection of vampires, disturbingly makes sense.
- In the Twispite comm, stories tagged as "Logical Extreme", "How should it have gone" and "Reality Enema" tend to have elements of deconstruction. From indicating how a very rich family without a visible form of income should really be perceived by the citizens of a small town, to how the whole plot would have played out if there were not supernatural elements implied, to Renesmee's situation...
- The fanfic moves in mysterious ways deconstructs a whole chunk of the series: the way that vampires just show up at high schools with little to no past or family and how they might be perceived by more socially aware people, Bella's own social awkwardness, and a counterpoint to Bella's blood smelling particularly "tasty". The main character is a boy who finds vampire Bella creepy and stalker-like, who is disturbed how quickly she can be accepted into the school social order, the predatory manner in which she looks at people, and her general lack of modern human behaviors.
- If Bella Were Sane is a Deconstructive Parody, showing the series from a version of Bella who has an ounce of common sense. (And an actual personality.) Mostly Played for Laughs, but still.
- For You, I Will deals with Imprinting, or how imprinter's personality completely warps to fit what the imprintee wants and will do anything to make them happy. So... what if a werewolf imprinted on a remorseless sociopath who took joy in harming others? The result is this story, and it is not pretty.
- A Different Outcome deconstructs the series Artistic License – Biology and Hollywood Genetics. It turns out there's a lot of infidelity in ThunderClan.
- The oneshot Regrets of a Warrior deconstructs the series and the character's disdain towards being pets. Ash, formerly Barkpelt, lives his twilight years as a kittypet. He much prefers the comfortable and safe life he currently lives over the dangerous and tragic life of being a feral Clan cat.
