Do we really need Deconstructor Fleet?

I made a query about this a while back on ATT: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=118143&type=att

The gist of it is, Deconstructor Fleet is defined as "a work that deconstructs many tropes". However, there are several pages that have separate pages for Deconstructed Trope. So by that logic, shouldn't those works fall under Deconstructor Fleet?

Many examples posted both in Deconstructed Trope and in Deconstructor Fleet are duplicates. In addition, Deconstructor Fleet doesn't make the scope of the trope clear.

Basically, do we even need Deconstructor Fleet when dedicated Deconstructed Trope pages are a thing? Just seeing that a work has its own page is enough to tell to the reader that this is something a show does a lot, as with any other trope.

Apparently, it's when it deconstructs a lot of stuff and ends up with something new. That does feel superfluous when we have Deconstructed Trope, Genre Deconstruction, and Trope Maker separately, but it'd help if you review the wicks to see how much overlap there is.

I remember this discussion coming up before, and the conclusion was that Deconstructor Fleet deconstructed tropes from multiple genres, as opposed to Genre Deconstruction where only one genre was deconstructed.

My thoughts were, we don't really make a big deal of how many examples a thing has with other tropes. For example, a work can change genres only once or ten times, but the trope that applies is still Genre Shift - there's no separate trope to count how many times you did it.

I hadn't thought of Genre Deconstruction, but once again, its existence makes Deconstructor Fleet even more unecessary in my opinion. I mean, if someone decides to deconstruct superheroes, then the natural result is to pick apart as many superhero tropes as possible, so obviously there'll be multiple Deconstructed Trope examples. Not to mention, most tropes aren't exlusive to one genre.

Edited by Lermis on Jun 12th 2023 at 11:51:14 AM

I have always felt this trope was born of two trends in the early days of the wiki, prizing clever names above viable tropes, and having tropes that were "X... but so much more!" to make gushing, or at least hyperbole, magnets. The description relies on "you know it when you see it" instead of defining what counts.

The only way I could see to salvage it would be to rework it into "Works that never play things quite straight"/"Works that feature deconstruction in every arc or instalment".

Heh, option 1 is pretty hard to do, with how many tropes there are. Closest I can think of is the 100 girlfriends manga (can't recall exact title), where the author tries to attribute a different harem trope to each girl and deconstruct it.

Option two relies on a work being long or having multiple installments...

And then there is the fact that there are so many tropes some of them WILL get played straight, and if you try to Deconstruct something, it can fall into another. The Ace to Broken Ace, Determinator to Detrimental Determination, Magical Girl to Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction... Those come on top of my head.

Edited by Lermis on Jun 13th 2023 at 10:14:21 PM

We also have Better than a Bare Bulb and No Fourth Wall for tropes that are basically "does X a lot" (X being Lampshade Hanging and Breaking the Fourth Wall respectively).

The idea that a work can deconstruct multiple genres is somewhat noteworthy as it implies that deconstructing tropes and genres is its genre, maybe even its reason for existence, more than anything else due to the use of Genre-Busting it implies, but such a work seems like it would be exceedingly rare and seems barely present if at all in the original YKTTW (which is definitely reflective of a much earlier time in the wiki's development).

Edited by MorganWick on Jun 13th 2023 at 1:21:04 AM

As you said, the busting multiple genres is covered both by Genre Deconstruction and by Genre-Busting.

Does anyone in general agree or disagree that Deconstructor Fleet is unnecessary?

Edited by Lermis on Jun 13th 2023 at 7:52:56 PM

The problem is Deconstruction and the like is more of a media analysis topic than an actual trope, most deconstruction tropes and their examples can come across as a Room Full of Crazy as editors are connecting their pet String Theory.

Deconstructor Fleet suffers from the general deconstruction problems and also how "It deconstructs A LOT of tropes" as that is no different than a Genre Deconstruction poking at all the tropes of a certain genre. That said, the name and basic idea may have merit if seen as a taking a Genre Roulette approach to deconstruction, where each installment brings up a new topic to dismantle instead of being all mashed together.

In addition to what everyone else has said, this has always seemed particularly 'badge-of-honor'y to me. Like woo, so many deconstructions*, isn't it clever?

*or what I think are deconstructions

It's a problem arguably even Deconstruction has as well, and they both feel perpetuated by tropers who have a vague idea of genre conventions but haven't watched anything with the original version of these tropes, and act like what they're watching is groundbreaking even when those elements were there in the original work (i.e. an Unbuilt Trope). Deconstructor Fleet is that problem but spread out even further and at that point the concept seems meaningless.

Personally I really like deconstruction tropes, but the more I thought about it the more redundant Deconstructor Fleet fleet is. I first noticed it with the whole duplicate example thing, then I was like "hold up shouldn't decon fleet be an "has its own page" trope in the first place" and this came up.

The problem is The Same, but More. Basically, Deconstructed Trope, but more. More in both quantity^note To quote, "A Deconstructor Fleet doesn't just use one topic for parody or deconstruction. It sinks its meathooks into any trope it can find and folds and spindles it to shreds." and quality^note the "how this show is different from others" and "invent something new" parts.

How could this trope be wick-checked?

Edited by ElRise on Jun 14th 2023 at 10:07:43 PM

About the Wick check, I think we should compare for duplicate examples with other Deconstruction pages. I need to check myself in more detail, but I know there are duplicate entries. Also, for some reason Deconstructor Fleet doesn't have an Anime and Manga segment?

Here's an example: in Anime.Yu Gi Oh Arc V, it lists Deconstruction in its tropes list, with the note being that there are so many examples that it has its own page. That page is DeconstructedTrope.Yu Gi Oh Arc V. If you click on that link, it says at the top of the page before listing examples that a) a number of them fall under Internal Deconstruction (not all of them though, The Chessmaster for example certainly isn't YGO exclusive), and that there are enough examples for the work to qualify as a Deconstructor Fleet. The fleet trope isn't listed on the main work page.

On the other hand, I have seen Deconstructor Fleet listed on works that do not have enough Deconstruction examples for their own page.

Another example, Manga.My Hero Academia does have a dedicated Deconstructor Fleet page, but it separates them between "Shonen and Superhero tropes" (which would be Genre Deconstruction), and other tropes. A good chunk of those examples are listed properly in the main Deconstructed Trope page, but the existence of the dedicated fleet page isn't mentioned anywhere.

It's just this weird... I can't even call it double standard, it's a multi standard.

It does seem like The Same, but More. The trope description is weirdly defensive about that fact, too:

> Do not confuse this with Deconstruction, which doesn't invent something new, but criticizes the old.

How are they different, though? In fact, that line bothers me a lot, because it smacks of "this trope is a GOOD trope, for shows that have SMART deconstructions that add new stuff, not just tearing things down like those other, bad, ordinary deconstructions!" Any deconstruction can create something new and original, that's not unique to this trope.

Like a lot of The Same, but More it seems to suffer from a Tropes Are Not Good problem where this is clearly a trope people use to shill their favorite shows, talking about how unbelievably transgressive they are and how they break all the boundaries and so on.

I would also strenuously argue against the inclusion of MHA at all (if this is going to be a trope, I don't think it should get even a one-sentence entry, let alone an entire subpage.) I'm not sure it's even a deconstruction at all, let alone a super-duper special EXTREME mega deconstruction - its basic outline and plot beats would have been completely unexceptional as an X-Men story in the 90s. At best it is a (very slightly) Darker and Edgier or slightly more realistic take on the topic, but even then, only by a little bit, and only compared to the most lighthearted superhero stuff that people seem to be comparing it to - it's not nearly as gritty-realistic, reality-ensues focused, or extreme as some of the stuff we got in the 90's.

Which shows the core problem; the entries there are usually Older Than They Think where editors who don't seem very familiar with eg. the sorts of comics that inspired MHA treat takes on a genre that are extremely standard nowadays as somehow being new and transgressive. A key tell is that if you click through several of the examples listed on MHA's page, they're not actually described as deconstruction on the main page for the tropes listed - they're just straight examples. You couldn't really call eg. Midoriya's Chronic Hero Syndrome a deconstruction on a page where it's surrounded by fundamentally identically straightforward takes on the trope. Lots of stuff listed there is just aversions and not really deconstructions.

The entire thing has a heavy "I'm not like the OTHER girls" feel to it, like shows really end up here when they attract viewers who don't usually like the genre the show is in and therefore feel compelled to try and defend why they like it (while being unfamiliar with the genre's tropes and therefore assuming the things they like are newer and more transgressive than they may actually be.)

Edited by Aquillion on Jun 14th 2023 at 12:14:19 PM

So a cleanup on top of everything...? I'm not trying to show bias towards any show in the terms of "this is better than the other", I'm just listing examples I'm more familiar with... But you do have a point about Deconstructor Fleet being some kind of status symbol. And The Same But More... I need to read through that page.

Honestly, I'd skip the cleanup and go straight to TRS. I wasn't sure at first, but the more I read this thread the more I'm sold on cutting this.

I'm for a TRS as well, for the reasons brought up before. And to make my stance clear, I don't think Deconstruction is an inherently bad idea, I just think it's often been misused in media analysis circles, especially as a "badge of honor". It's still worth pointing out when it pops up, but not in these shoehorned or misinformed ways.

So it's ok to just put it in the TRS Queue with no wick check? If wick check is needed, we check for whether the trope is a duplicate for Genre Deconstruction and attracts gushing?

Edited by ElRise on Jun 15th 2023 at 12:55:56 AM

I don't think so.

Like I said before, I really like Deconstruction, but I feel that Deconstructor Fleet definitely needs to be cut. Part of it is the description that was pointed out above, which insists that "something new is being made here!" even though it's just a list of deconstructed tropes.

While I find dedicated Deconstruction pages to be fun, it's perfectly functional and reasonable to just point out when a trope is deconstructed in the trope list itself.

Another thing I want to take a look at is how those examples are written. For instance, the Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V pages I pointed out earlier assumes that the reader is familiar with the previous series, so when looking at it from the perspective of someone who is NOT familiar, it looks like misuse.

I'm certain there are many more examples like this, where people wrote poorly written examples due to over-enthousiasm or assumed x was obvious or something. It would hardly be the only time we had to clean up something because popularity led to misuse (looking at the failed attempt(s) of cleaning up Foil).

However, I'm certain that wiki policy is to try and salvage a trope first instead of sending it straight to the cutting board... Is there anyone we can ask on this? Like a TRS idea thread? Actually, I should just check.

Edited by Lermis on Jun 14th 2023 at 9:52:20 PM

If you want to ask about whether or not this is a TRS candidate, there's always the TRS meta thread. If you want to do it yourself/with help, How to Do a Wick Check, the Wick Check Project thread, and if there's an issue, the TRS Queue.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jun 15th 2023 at 2:32:20 PM

Looking at the two times it's been in TRS, the only good argument I can see for having it is that otherwise some work pages would have very long entries for Deconstruction or Deconstructed Trope because they do it in many different ways. But Genre Deconstruction would apply to most of them, and otherwise it's a matter of knowing how to write these entries concisely.

And looking over those two threads, it's clear no-one knows what to do with this trope, but they couldn't bring themselves to make a case for cutting.

I would suggest doing a wick check looking for what other tropes each wick might fit under. If we find nothing unique to it, then we have a good case for cutting and disambiguating.

Wait, there have been old TRS thread's for Deconstructor Fleet? Can you link them?

They are linked in the discussion tab.