Reconstruction: Difference between revisions

[[File:Recons 4798.jpg|link=Cracked.com|right|frame|[http://www.cracked.com/article_18741_the-evolution-fictional-characters-by-medium-5Bcomic5D.html By Winston Rowntree]]]

 

 

So the genre has just been [[Deconstruction|deconstructed]]. What used to be seen as a wonderful and happy story has been shown as it would really be, often much darker than it was previously portrayed as. What hundreds of thousands of children wished were real is now considered [[Fridge Horror|the stuff of nightmares]].

So, you wanted to be a [[Princess Classic]]? Well, [[Rose of Versailles|your husband is Louis XVI]].

 

 

In short, your previous fantasy has been shown to be badly thought out, and it turns out to lead to (or even derive from) things that are... not nice.

So what do you fantasize about now?

 

 

Thus, [[Princess Classic]] is not being married into a fairy-tale monarchy, but into a post-Napoleonic 19th- or 20th-century one—a constitutional monarchy in [[Ruritania]], with the scenery and regalia but without the power and corruption, so she won't end up like Marie Antoinette.

 

Not to be confused with the [[Freeware Games|Freeware RPG]] ''[[The Reconstruction]]'', season six of [[Red vs. Blue]], or, for that matter, with [[American Civil War|the Reconstruction Era]].

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''Yuusha-Oh [[GaoGaiGar]]'' was a direct, deliberate reaction to ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''.

* ''[[Cross Game]]'' seems out to do this with [[Replacement Goldfish]]..

* ''[[Parallel Trouble Adventure Dual]]'' managed to give us all the Evangelion-esc action, without the Evangelion-esc drama and [[Mind Screw]].

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' is a reconstruction of the entire history of mecha, starting with [[The Seventies]] era of [[Super Robot]] anime with Kamina as the voice of the seventies, then came Nia and [[The Eighties]] "''[[Real Robot]]''" style storyline of [[The Empire]] vs the Rebels and [[The Nineties]] with the whole Evangelion deconstruction type era with Rossiu leading the way. TTGL is a trip through the Mecha Genre.

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ|Gundam ZZ]]'' can be seen as a Reconstruction in the Gundam franchise, where [[Mobile Suit Gundam]] put forth the original concept layout of Gundam, and [[Zeta Gundam]] became a Deconstruction of those concepts, such as [[Falling Into the Cockpit]]. Though not everyone [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|saw it as such.]]

* [[Tiger and Bunny]] is a curious case: it's a reconstruction of American Superhero Comic Books done as a Japanese animated show! In-universe, despite seemingly being sellouts, the heroes keep their moral ground even when an [[Anti-Hero]] and a [[Smug Snake]] mock them for it.

* ''[[Madoka Magica]]'' is a show that first [[Deconstruction|deconstructs]] the basic tropes of the magical girl genre, but then proceeds to completely reconstruct the essence of the magical girl genre, that hope will always win out over despair. This reconstruction is much more important to the series as a whole than the superficial deconstruction.

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Astro City]].'' In fact, most of [[Kurt Busiek]]'s works involve nuanced reconstruction on some level.

** ''[[Kingdom Come]]'' was a particularly famous comics reconstruction that delivered a rather heavy-handed denouncement of the [[Nineties Anti-Hero]]. Though it should be noted that the story ended up with {{spoiler|''all'' the super-heroes realizing they were flawed, removing their masks, and joining normal human society.}}

** ''[[Justice]]'' is more a reconstruction proper, as it is essentially ''[[Superfriends]]'' without the camp, token characters, and low-budget visuals. Its opening reads like a superhero deconstruction, with the rest of the series reading like a thorough rebuttal.

* While the first two volumes of ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' were definitely deconstructions of Victorian adventure fiction (and for that matter, the concept of the [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]]), ''The Black Dossier'' seems a reconstruction of the concept (though in doing so, it becomes a deconstruction of 20th century fiction). If you aren't somewhat confused, then [[Alan Moore]] hasn't done his job.

** And even the first two books were a reconstruction in their own way. Sure, Moore brought on all kinds of moral ambiguity and tossed aside typical Victorian ideals, but at the same time he was taking some of the most awesome literary characters of the time and giving them their full due. It had been a long, long time since Fu Manchu had been anything but a parody.

** Also, Genre: Heroes don't kil because of the [[Comics Code Authority]]. Decon: Superheroes kill, and those who don't wind up getting beaten by the villain. Recon: Superheroes don't kill because they are not police or military and therefore don't have the legal authority to kill.

* ''[[Captain Atom]]: Armageddon'' was this as well. By the time it came out, the [[Wildstorm]] characters had come to embody all the excesses of the [[Dark Age]], so DC brought [[Captain Atom]], who, while [[Deconstructor Fleet|hardly what you'd call a traditional superhero]], nonetheless was a much more [[The Cape (trope)|wholesome, positive character]] to set the [[Wildstorm]] Universe to rights.

 

 

* ''[http://alaxr274.deviantart.com/gallery/33810717 Super Milestone Wars] and it's sequel is a reconstruction of the [[Deconstruction Crossover]] trope itself.

* ''[[Power Rangers GPX]]'' does this with ''[[Super Sentai]]''/''[[Power Rangers]]''. What makes this different is that it starts out parodying/lampshading/just plain making fun of [[Power Rangers]] tropes, begins playing it straight, then drifting towards deconstruction before veering right into Reconstruction in the penultimate chapter.

* While ''[[Hunting the Unicorn]]'' is largely a [[Deconstruction Fic]], it is indirectly ''re''constructive since it portrays Blaine as a believable character rather than a [[Relationship Sue]]. In-story, it's starting to reconstruct how damaged he is by showing how Kurt and Blaine genuinely care about each other, averting [[There Are No Therapists]], and using a healthy dose of [[The Power of Friendship]] / [[The Power of Love|Love]].

* ''[[Blue Sky (fanfic)|Blue Sky]]'' is a Reconstruction of the 'Wheatley becomes human' breed of fanfiction. This extremely large branch of the portal fan-community tree is rife with variations, ranging from innocent, helpless Human!Wheatley who needs Chell, to Wheatley being a psychotic, corrupted android with a taste for non-con. In this fic, Wheatley is sorry for what he did, but he's not entirely innocent either. Chell is willing to forgive him, but doesn't right off the bat, and makes it very clear that Wheatley has to earn her trust. Even the most common thread of these stories, GlaDOS seeking revenge, is subverted. She is only interested in testing, and making Wheatley hurt to reach that goal is more of a fringe benefit than anything else.

 

 

* ''[[Hard Boiled]]'' features every single police officer character as unambiguously heroic, as an apology by [[John Woo]] for the way Chinese films had started to glorify criminals (including some of Woo's previous films). Their conduct in the hospital sequence in particular puts an extra helping of "Heroic" in [[Heroic Bloodshed]].

* ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'' was partially an attempt to revive the British police officer as a credible movie hero after almost every British crime movie of the previous decade (or at least since ''[[Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels]]'') had instead focused on glorifying criminals. Hot Fuzz spent its first half brutally deconstructing the police-action movie, then used its second half to gleefully rebuild it.

* ''[[Silverado]]'' reconstructed the Western in [[The Eighties]].

* When the [[James Bond]] series appeared dead (and had been somewhat deconstructed in the Timothy Dalton era), ''[[True Lies]]'' appeared to reconstruct the spy-action-adventure genre by way of [[Affectionate Parody]]. Ironically, it is a remake of a French ''parody'' of Hollywood action-adventure movies.

* ''[[Cloverfield]]'' does this to [[Kaiju]] movies. Ironically, people believed it to be a [[Deconstruction]], forgetting [[Unbuilt Trope|what a horrific anti-atomic weapons allegory]] the [[Trope Codifier]] ''[[Godzilla|Gojira]]'' really is. It started out horrific, got light and fluffy, and returned to being horrific. The film performs this recontruction by showing the events of the film through the perspective of normal civilions. It's a surprisingly effective way to show just how gut-wrenchingly brutal and terrifying a giant monster attack would be in real life.

* ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' could be seen as a Reconstruction not only of the ''[[Star Trek]]'' franchise, but also the [[Space Opera]] genre as a whole. While the franchise had been heavily deconstructed to begin with, the later series ''had'' moved away from many aspects of [[Star Trek: The Original Series|the original series]]. The genre as a whole had suffered from certain works (including ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' and the ''[[Star Wars]]'' prequels, though, as always, [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]]) becoming notorious for generating a [[Hatedom]] and [[Broken Base]], and undergone [[Deconstruction]] with the remake of ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' in 2000.

* The ''[[Joshuu Sasori]]'' films are a reconstruction of the [[Girls Behind Bars|Women In Prison]] genre. While the genre normally consists of deeply mysogenist, red-hot-lesbian flicks created purely for men's tittilation and possessed of virtually no artistic merit, Shunya Itou made the ''[[Joshuu Sasori]]'' films thoughtful, vicious, artful and surreal works with an overtly feminist message, without even changing the basic common plotline.

 

== Literature ==

* [[Michael Chabon]] loves these. He's one of the most respected writers in America, yet many of his books take on subjects usually seen as meaningless pop culture, as if to prove that they ''can'' have literary merit if done right.

** ''[[Summerland]]'' reconstructs adolescent [[High Fantasy]] like ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' by giving it a fresh setting—in this case, a fantasy-world based on American culture and folklore.

** ''Literature/Gentlemen Of The Road'' reconstructs [[Two-Fisted Tales]] and pulp adventure stories.

* [[Harry Potter]] takes the idea of the inherent corruption that comes from magic, but thanks to a little something called [[The Power of Friendship|humanity]] and [[The Power of Love|pure hearts]], it turns from a [[Crap Saccharine World]] to [[A World Half Full]].

* ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' seems to do this with the courtly love genre in the ''Franklin's Tale''. Chaucer had parodied the genre in both the ''Miller's Tale'' and the [[Stylistic Suck|deliberately sucky]] ''Tale of Sir Topas'' (which Chaucer [[The Danza|assigned to himself]]). The ''Franklin's Tale'' Reconstructs it by keeping the postive genre element of celebrating honorable conduct, but jettison's the genre's stance that love only exists outside of marriage.

* Charles Dickens' ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'' actually deconstructed the idealistic Self Made Man with Ebeneezer Scrooge, a man who had become wealthy through greed and at the expense of other people. However Scrooge learned the error of his ways and became a good person and thus an idealistic Self Made Man.

* ''[[Sunshine (novel)|Sunshine]]'' by Robin McKinley may be a reconstruction of urban fantasy and vampire books. Instead of accepting a secret world of magic or trying to rationalize it, it's thrown out: vampires and magic have always been around. Enough names are droppped to indicate that history hasn't remained the same, it's a different world than ours, but the protagonist is young and focus-minded enough that the author can get away without describing the details. Magical superpredators of humans (vampires) come across as physically and mentally alien—though they can pass when they need to.

 

== Music ==

* [[Sufjan Stevens]]' yearly ''Songs For Christmas'' EP's were a personal reconstruction of Christmas Music for Sufjan: his attempt to capture the sublime melancholy of Christmas music at its best, and to come to terms with the [[Glurge]] of the holiday season. (Sufjan had previously dismissed Christmas itself as a social construct.)

* [[Tenacious D]]'s music seems to be a reconstruction of classic rock. Though they don't take themselves or their lyrics very seriously, they certainly take the ''music'' seriously. As they wrote in "The Metal":

* Monster Magnet is another reconstruction of classic rock, as are the Hellacopters. (especially on their early albums)

* The Darkness, with their five minute guitar solos and soaring falsettos is either a reconstruction or brilliant parody of Glam Metal.

** A reconstruction basically. Sadly for them, they got pigeon holed rather unfairly into being a novelty parody, and faded away after the misguided fans got bored of the 'parody' and started ignoring the music.

** Similarly rap group [[Dead Prez]] tried to reconstruct rebellious, hardcore, socio-political rap.

*** Would Flipsyde count as something related?

* ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'' pretty much deconstructs every single Western genre trope, then reconstructs every single one throughout the game into a massive [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] by the end.

* ''[[Disgaea]]'' was this to the Strategy RPG genre, mostly by being very comedic, not taking itself seriously, and dropping most of the long winded political stuff that the genre had favored since Ogre Tactics.

* ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' reconstructs the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] in a few areas, specifically the near-totally infested town of Ravenholm. Said zombies are created by a huge [[Puppeteer Parasite]] that latches onto the head (the headcrab), but it's surprising how many zombie tropes are played with and how many work.

** The Addon ''Episode 2'' leads out of the ruined and mostly abandoned cities and turns to the wilderness, which is the more post-apocalyptic version of the ...well, [[Zombie Apocalypse]]. Many of the best scenes consist of exploring seemingly abandoned buildings next to the road.

** [[Indecisive Deconstruction|If you see the original as a deconstruction]] of ''Doom'' and [[A Space Marine Is You]], ''Half-Life 2'' reconstructs the idea by showing how one man and his [[Power Armor]] [[Right Man in the Wrong Place|really could save the world]].

* ''[[Sonic Colors]]'' is SEGA's attempt at reconstructing the light-hearted feel of the classic ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' era, having decided the series has gotten ''way'' too serious as of lately. General consensus is that they succeeded. [[Surprisingly Improved Sequel|Spectacularly so]].

* ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]'' reconstructs the arcade-style action games and mythology-styled games in a similar vein to [[Gurren Lagann]]. While the game is aware of the darker implications that games like [[Bayonetta]] and [[God of War]] have brought up (ie; [[Black and Grey Morality]], [[Light Is Not Good]], [[God Is Flawed]], [[Crap Saccharine World]], [[Eldritch Abominations]] etc.) it still manages to maintain a light-hearted tone while keeping with the tropes that those other games brought up.

 

*** Not to mention that Colonel Gathers is now back as head of the OSI because he complained about how thing were going. Its basically been revealed the the Secret Peace between heroes and villains is really just a front the even more Secret War between heroes and villains which is far far stranger and multi-leveled than any other kind of politics.

** In some ways, The Monarch is slowly becoming a reconstruction of the Supervillain, as, through a combination of [[Genre Savvy|Genre Savviness]], [[Not So Harmless]], and [[Dark Mistress]], he's climbed the ranks from lame nemesis to a truly dangerous foe.

* The jury may be out, but this seems to be the entire purpose to the newest ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' series, ''[[Scooby Doo Mystery Inc]]''. The series takes a comically cynical approach to the Scooby Doo mythos, but it doesn't outright [[Affectionate Parody|parody]] or [[Deconstructed Trope|deconstruct]] the elements. While the kids are, realistically, treated as a nuisance by the law and their parents constantly question why they're obsessed with solving mysteries, the kids still get the job done and solve mysteries because they love it and love hanging around with each other.

** Case in point, at the end of Episode 11, the gang breaks up under the weight of the group's relationship issues. A straight deconstruction would probably end there - Mystery Inc. is a group of teenagers in high school investigating crimes in their home town, so eventually they have to grow up and find real jobs. However, Mystery Inc. gets back together by the end of the next episode, realizing that solving these mysteries really is what they were meant to do, and the team begins repairing their bonds - the reconstruction is that the Scooby Gang would have personality clashes, just like any group of friends, but acknowledging these clashes and finding ways to cope with them strengthens the group. (A straight parody, on the other hand, probably wouldn't even bring up these issues in the first place.)

* ''[[Archer]]'' does this to a whole lot of [[Spy Fiction]] tropes;

** Its [[Jerkass]] [[James Bond]] [[Expy]] protagonist is self-centred, [[Really Gets Around|can't keep it in his pants]], [[Overt Operative|can't maintain a cover identity to save his life]], all his colleagues hate him and he displays [[Ping-Pong Naivete|at times profound stupidity]]... but he's incredibly competent in certain areas of his job.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]