Can a Reconstruction cause further Unfortunate Implications

When a trope has Unfortunate Implications a Deconstruction can often address those implications. A Reconstruction can often make the trope work without such implications, but it can also attempt to justify the implications which makes it much more offensive.

Do you have a particular example in mind?

I can't speak for the site at large, but here's my thoughts. If the Reconstruction raises implications that don't fix the issues it was trying to address, then it's not a Reconstruction. However, Author's Saving Throw permits listing *attempts* at an AST that failed to land with audiences, so I could see the case for listing clumsy failed attempts at Reconstructions on the page.

What you're describing has little to do with deconstruction or reconstruction, and seems more like the equivalent of Voodoo Shark applied to morality instead of plausibility. I think I have seen it, though no example comes to mind.

It would be difficult to trope, since Voodoo Shark is already rather shaky as to what counts (there's been talk of bringing it to TRS, but how to repair it is not clear), and Unfortunate Implications has been a long-running headache now exiled to Flame Bait.

Things like Reconstruction and Deconstruction are not so much tropes as they are critical analysis concepts. Rather than an isolated event that was woven into the story, these originate more from the audience who is analyzing the work holistically. Many are generally agreed upon examples such as Watchmen is a deconstruction of the comic book genre while Kingdom Come is a reconstruction, but it's usually just one troper who has a creative arts essay to share.

So the question of a reconstruction carrying problematic implications, the answer is simply yes. That's because what exactly the work was trying to reconstruct is usually ill-defined to start with.

Deconstruction, as we define it, is a term I've seen used outside the wiki, for when a story that had been within the comfort zone of a well-worn genre decides to subvert its expected conventions and go in a more internally plausible direction. In many cases it's a conscious decision by the writer.

Reconstruction is a lot more dubious. It seems to be used for "not as deconstructive as this other work that preceded it." It's hard to distinguish from Genre Throwback unless it is made with the earlier work in mind in some way.

Okay, if we're going to start talking about Reconstruction in general, I have to mention that we did that not that long ago.

Not quite: a reconstruction is supposed to be a case where a trope or genre that has been frequently deconstructed, is then presented in a way that largely resembles the original straight example but takes the critiques made by the deconstructions into account.

For example, you could have a work that presents democracy as an absolute good, then another work that says no, Democracy Is Bad, and then a third work replies that no, Democracy Is Flawed: it's unstable and takes continuous effort to maintain, but that work is still very much worth the effort.

Edited by StarSword on Oct 25th 2023 at 12:49:47 PM

Yes, that's the intended definition, but how often can it be applied in practice? Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is often described as a reconstruction in response to Neon Genesis Evangelion, but it came more than a decade later, and in everything other than its protagonist it takes inspiration from the shows that preceded Evangelion. In so far as it's responding to it, it does so rather simplistically, and many other works have taken on Evangelion's themes of depression and loneliness more eloquently.

There are a few cases of clear reconstruction, like some of the stories Alan Moore did after Watchmen where he tried to make more believable superheroes. But in general, while I can see that genres evolve with cycles of deconstruction and reconstruction, I find that it's difficult to name single works as reconstructions.