/co/ - Comics & Cartoons

>>1056753

Deconstructions are fun the first time around, but not when they're done frequently.

For fun?

Think of it like the difference between Leonardo da Vinci dissecting corpses and a crazed murderer tearing apart his victims. One is studying human anatomy while the other is a sadist or a gorefag.

>>1056755

This. It changes things up in interesting ways, and allows you to view familiar concepts from a different angle. Though once that becomes overused, it's usually time to deconstruct the deconstruction, or reconstruct the original thing. Nothing stays novel forever. Right now we seem to be in a phase where fucking everything is deconstruction, and that's just boring/

When you love something, you may want it to go even further beyond. Comic books used to be about an indestructible guy with superpowers and a plot armor as thick as the plot itself, which made them look like something thst was made exclusively for children in the eyes of the general population, literary critics and intellectuals. "Fuck them", you may think, but stagnation is terrible in the long run, and some degree of deconstruction or permutation is needed to avoid literary incest. You fags would know since most of you hate anime due to what it has become, ehat with around 80% of it being boring uninspired moeblob and fanservice fests without a semblance of a deeper plot than cute girls doing cute things or shonen anime heroes saving the day the same way over and over, but whatever. Isekai are the prime example of literary incest, and it urgently needs some sort of "Citizen Kane" or Watchmen of isekai to legitimize the genre, or fall out of fashion for good. Comics used to be like isekai, just mindless entertainment with simple and shallow plots designed for children, young teens, and autists who couldn't move on.

Alan Moore thought "hey, we can do more with superheroes and comics than we are currently doing". His practical example was Watchmen. He wrote it to show the rest of the world you can do a lot of different stuff with superheroes, other than making them invincible and saving the day time after time. In Watchmen, he explored some aspects about human psychology, as well as some criticism of society and authority, something that hadn't be done before in the context of superheroes. Since Watchmen was good, it got praised to hell and back, and people assumed the wrong idea: Moore wanted people to try to do different, new stuff, and apply new themes to superheroes; people simply understood superheroes could be dark and edgy too, and look at how well that turned out. Moore has recently stated that "inventing" dark and edgy superheroes was a mistake, since people just copied his style of writing rather than his philosophy of writing.

You can see what Moore actually meant if you read his run of the Swamp Thing. It's sad, but at the same time, warm, bright and optimistic. Alec Holland is undoubtably a superhero, just one with different methods.

>Just ignore it and move to a genre or type of medium you like or offer your own take on it in a constructive way.

Because it is entertaining to look at things from a different perspective.

>>1056794

I love anime. Don't assume.

Because seeing the same shit again and again is tedious.

We can only imagine what kind of histories we could get with superpowers but we mostly only see the same MCU formula done to death of two supers with identical powers fighting.

As pretty much every other anon said already, telling the same story over and over is boring.

It's what high on their own farts leftists do.

>>1056753

>I can't create

>But I can destroy

>>1056798

what a fag

>>1056753

>If you like or even love a certain type of medium or genre then why should you feel the need to deconstruct it?

Self-reflection, to better understand the medium itself, moving past overused and tired tropes, moving forward to tell new and more complex stories, fun? As long as new material is being made, what's wrong with deconstruction such as Watchmen?

>>1056841

Well, the problem is people are idiots who don't realise you're eventually supposed to build things back up, and just end up endlessly deconstructing because it worked the first time.

Think of it like this. You have a lego set. You deconstruct the lego set. All the bricks are separated, waiting to be assembled into something new and exciting, and instead of doing that you take a hammer, and smash them into a fine powder that will never be anything of worth to anyone again. That's the state of fictional writing in 2019.

>>1056898

It's just a coincidence.

>>1056753

>If you like or even love a certain type of medium or genre

so we can exclude Alan Moore here

>>1056836

Cervantes hated Quixote's guts. He was a war veteran who became disillusioned at chivalry novels who were pretty much a dead horse even by then so he made a pseudo deconstruction, it deconstructs a lot of chivalry tropes but with the clear purpose to make Quixote look insane, part 2, if anything is a deconstruction of part 1. Quixote, Sancho, part 1 and the many sequel fanfics are now famous, so Quixote become increasingly more disillusioned about his life.

This also reflects Cervantes getting pissed at the fanfics and that all people got from Part 1 was "lol memes", shit, that's the only reason part 2 even exists and why almost no one has read it in comparison. At the beginning the book even makes fun of some guy who likes fiction chivalry books rather that ones based on real events. Cervantes wanted to make Quixote some dark and edgy deconstruction.

>>1057005

In short, he wanted to make a deconstruction, ended up making a reconstruction, so he had to deconstruct that.

It's a meaningless word that people throw around without understanding it because it makes them feel smart.

>Oh he made a comic about people having feels when they have super powers, that's so original and deep. I better masturbate to it for a week and compare it to Evangelion.

People like edgy versions of things they already like so you make an edgy version of something and label it deep and complex.

>>1057008

No, sorry. You're wrong. It's exactly what it says on the tin. You take things apart and take a closer look at all of the components that make them up.

>Okay, super heroes

>what kind of an impact would these people actually have on society?

>what kind of people would they be?

>what would being a super hero do to them mentally?

>what would be the implications of allowing these incredibly powerful humans to stand above the law?

>what would the government do? would they move to weaponise them? Try to outlaw them?

It's not just dark and edgyness. That would be something like Spawn that just takes the super hero model, and does it with more blood.

>>1057015

as a side, deconstruction can often be comedic rather than edgy. The Incredibles, for example.

>>1057032

>>1057015

Thank you for proving my point. The incredibles is not a deconstruction, it's just a family comedy super hero movie. The only thing you could argue it deconstructs and have a valid argument is the nuclear family. Where Dad isn't good enough at his job to keep his family safe.

Kick ass would be actual super hero deconstruction. But hey, fart sniffers going to sniff farts so you keep on proving my point fags.

>>1056836

A proper deconstruction takes a standard genre story, but looks at minute subtext in a more realistic light. In Watchmen, the character are all still heroes who do the normal capeshit shennanigans, but it examines that, as people, they would have a legitimate breaking point. One Punch Man is still a standard superhero story from the macro scale, but it focuses on the depression that someone like Superman would have. A shitty deconstruction tries to convince you that the underlying themes and concepts of a genre are dumb and stupid. The Umbrella Academy show is a great example I never read the comic. It takes pleasure in the idea that we could never have a "proper" superhero in real life.

>>1057040

Kick Ass is also deconstruction. Did anyone say it wasn't?

>>1057040

parody and satire are used to deconstruct genres and tropes and just reverting expectations doesn't mean deconstructing something.

>>1057005

>Cervantes hated Quixote's guts

no, it's more like Cervantes just didn't care and was trying to make money. the real reason part 2 exists is that someone else went and made their own part 2, so it wasn't a "fan-fiction", a literal part 2 was created and passed around as the real thing.

cervantes was also trying to self-promote himself, all the little side stories in part 1 where other short stories he wrote and crammed into it. quixote wasn't meant to be "dark and edgy", but it was meant to be a satire.

>>1057006

>In short, he wanted to make a deconstruction, ended up making a reconstruction, so he had to deconstruct that.

you're giving cervantes way too much credit, he wanted to make a satirical work, saw someone trying to make their own part 2, and spent a lot of time in his own part 2 ribbing at that person.

anyways, the best parts of the book are the dialogue between quixote and sancho (cervantes was a play-wright, after all), but most of the episodic adventures are just silly and end up with quixote getting hurt.

i did like the one where sancho got convinced he became a mayor though

>>1057008

Deconstruction is when you put the cliches of a genre in a realistic context and show that other fiction is romanticizing something that is or would be actually shitty. Problem is people are starved for tragedy these days (most contemporary fiction being some kind of morality play where "good" triumphs) and things going shitty tends to be popular. That's why you had such a glut of "grounded" capeshit for a while. People only appreciate the shittiness as making a point if they put it in that context. Instead, the shittiness becomes a spectacle unto itself. Not /co/ but Evangelion is probably the best example of trying to portray a type of fiction to be as gross as possible and still having the target audience like it. If you are too invested in the story, its almost like the shitty experience of the characters becomes a "trial by fire" the audience sees them endure and makes them sympathetic. For a deconstruction to be effective you have to create disrance between the work and the audience so they engage with it in a critical or objective way instead of a sympathetic way. That's why Watchmen is dry and keeps its characters at a distance.

Sometimes it works, sometimes don't.

Spaghetti westerns were nothing but a deconstruction of the regular westerns, and they were amazing. It is only in present times that I hate the term postmodernism.

>>1057064

Depends if its the comic yes its a deconstruction. The movie? Starts out as a deconstruction goes full superhero at the end. Sequel film also goes full superhero.

>>1057043

There's a storytime thread here of Umbrella Academy if you want.

>>1057304

That's not even what's good about it. Hell, the "raw shock value" of Watchmen is maybe like two pages.

>>1056794

>Alan Moore thought "hey, we can do more with superheroes and comics than we are currently doing".

Bullshit. All his writing is filled with arrogance and LOATHING, and he has done fucking NOTHING with his own work.

The truth is that the man is a arrogance bitter asshole who thought he deserved "Higher Level" work, but then turns out he couldn't and his ideas ended up destroying the medium.

I call bullshit on his

>"people just copied his style of writing rather than his philosophy of writing."

thing. Its more like his bad ideas are thrust back into his face and now he has to live with them.

League of Extraordinary Gentlement is a great example. Remove moores name, and all your left with is a butchering of classic characters with stupid levels of unnecessary grimness.

Like Imagine so many of his "Classic" Stories without his name attached and imagine say…Dan Didio as the editor. Practically the same thing.

Watchmen was good because of how the character the creator made that we were supposed to dislike ended up being possibly the fan favorite, eat shit Moore

>>1057142

>you're giving cervantes way too much credit, he wanted to make a satirical work

This is getting to fucking meta for me but are you making a deconstruction of the idea that one of the greatest works in written history and the most important literary piece of the spanish language was just some cripple who wanted a few shekels?

Don Quijote was first thought as a comedy and it took 200 years to find out the full spectrum of ideas behind the work. Part 2 was not just about giving the midle finger to a fanfic writer, it really is about human nature. By the end of part 2 it is actually Sancho who eggs Quixote on with wild and fantastic ideas, even on his deathbead, instead of the other way around.

Saying this is a serialized work is anachronistic - you are applying XXIst century mindset that should not belong.

t.litfag

>>1057351

Well, Dr Manhattan is the best character. Only edgelords like Rorschach the best.

If you ask me, depending on how you do it. Decons can either be this asshole who openly drop trouser and pee on the pool while everyone's enjoying a nice swim or making a new kind of recipe from tweaking the tried and true recipe. The latter one is rare but it has been done if you look back long enough, the former? That one is common place.

>>1056753

>Why deconstructing something?

Because "deconstruction" is used by too many pretentious writers who think that a deconstruction automatically equates to new, good, and smart. Deconstruction itself possesses novelty to the pretentious writer. Everyone reuses the cliches associated with it without understanding that those "cliches" were perhaps used appropriately in their own story context.

Fast-forward to today and we have to deal with tons of media that is a form of a deconstruction of another. Dark, brooding, gritty, etc - all bastard children of deconstruction. Nevermind the fact that deconstruction is a postmodernist tool to analyze things so as to better replicate or even fine-tune media for propaganda purposes. Everyone uses it, and thus most works are derivative.

>>1058365

>Deconstruction = dark and edgy

I have to disagree. I am a writer working on a deconstruction of isekai and videogame comedy, of all things, and it's far from dark. Sure, it's darker than your average comedy isekai, since one character dies and it's kind of a big deal that defines the whole novel, but it is optimistic from start to end.

I wanted to call it a "serious parody", rather than a deconstruction, but that's more or less what a deconstruction is. It's a deconstruction because the videogame jokes work on an asbtract level, rather than by comparing videogame logic to real world logic (no "haha so funny I just ate 30 cheese wheels while the enemy paused and was staring at me", just plain bad gameplay design that can get exploited to hell and back). It's a deconstruction because the protagonist's death matters and its circumstances are carried over to the fantasy world (and doesn't even happen until halfway into the story), and pretty much sets the direction of the novel from that poont onwards. It's a deconstruction because the protagonist's love interest actually doesn't want to be his girlfriend, and it's actually a good thing since she is an insufferable Mary Sue everybody actually hates, so he later on realices she may be better to keep at an arm's length. The protagonist is more of a loser than a guy with a super secret OP skill, so while he eventually becomes relatively powerful to compete, he is far from being unbeatable. Then we get into the part where everything becomes an essay on mathematics, computer science, learning how to let go, redemption, and the afterlife, which would never happen in your average isekai, but that's just there to build up some pretentiousness brownie points. Deconstruction has only become synonymous of edgy because some stupid fucks at TVTropes decided to associate the word to every "genre, but dark and edgy" like when they fucking labeled Madoka as a deconstruction of megucas, when it's clearly a subversion of the genre. Deconstruction is actually about picking apart conventions and clichés of a genre that has degenerated over time due to incestuous writing. Things that used to make sense in context were carried over to different contexts, without taking into account whether they make sense or not. Deconstruction is about reanalyzing those clichés people take for granted, taking the root, and then play them out in a more verosimile manner. The term carries a negative connotation around here due to its links to postmodernism, and then its links to SJW, but there is nothing inherently wrong with it when it's applied to art.

>>1058390

Forgot to say: I'm going to go the extra mile, and say that dark and edgy deconstructions require a deconstruction themselves. They became incestuous themselves after Watchmen.

>>1058391

Not sure how you decontruct dark and edginess, beyond making fun of it, which people have done. There's the "reconstruction" which is also a thing that has been done by shows like Gurren Lagann. Just playing the old cliches straight, and doing them well enough that they seem fresh and exciting again.

Bump

>>1056794

>Comic books used to be about an indestructible guy with superpowers and a plot armor as thick as the plot itself,

Stopped reading here. Your lack of research is showing.

>>1065419

You could elaborate on that.

>>1065424

Comics aren't all just superhero's, they used to be mystery, horror, a million different things before superhero's.

>>1056753

At best, because it's much easier to mess with something that exists than to build from scratch.

But mostly because art majors are taught that it's a way to pass for smart people.

"If this happened in real life then it would suck" is all deconstruction amounts to. It is for idiots and children.

>>1065530

>>1065419

>>1056794

It's also not true to say that cape comics were just indestructible guys and lazy plots until Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns etc. The genre had been maturing narratively throughout the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. Moore and Miller weren't writing in a vacuum.

>>1074308

One irreverent Golden Age cape title proves that narratives weren't becoming more complex over the course of the Silver and early Bronze Age how exactly?

<You're still here? The show's over….

No, it's not.

>>1056753

Neckbeards deconstruct things because noone would listen to them otherwise.

>>1074314

Oof

>>1058390

Are you really correct to blame TVTropes for the notion that Madoka is a deconstruction of the Magical Girl genre? Did that really spawn from TVTropes specifically? I wasn't watching seasonal anime back when Madoka was airing so I don't know what the reaction was to it at the time and when the word "deconstruction" begun to become associated with it but I always had the impression that it might've started somewhere in MAL and then spread from there. What do you remember?

>>1056753

Maybe it's done when the author likes the medium or genre but believes it can be better, so he points the most common blatant flaws he believes should be avoided.

>If you don't like or even hate a certain type of medium or genre or don't like certain aspects or tendencies of it

You seem to mistake deconstructing something for shitting on it.

>>1074359

Are there deconstructions out there that are absent of bitterness or spite towards the trope they subvert?

>>1074377

no.

>>1074359

Ok, fair point.

But imagine if there was a show you liked and someone shat on it by either having a character from another show torture them because of reasons involving hatred/jealousy/butthurt, OR, say, had a female adult character from the show torture a little boy from that same show until he cried.

If "Neither" wasn't an option, would you rather make a revenge fiction of the adult female/character getting their comeuppance in a way that starts a cycle of revenge (sort of like how Walter Sobchak did https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCcKBcZzGdA&app=desktop&persist_app=1 except Larry may slightly get affected), OR would you just channel that shatting of your character into a version that at the very least has a less meanspirited ending?