Nobody understands Evangelion.
How does one write a good deconstruction?
- Thread starter RequiemZero
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Nobody understands Evangelion.
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It's not hard to understand Evangelion, because its allusions aren't important to the story and its central conflicts are ones that everyone has experienced.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
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If I show Evangelion to my sister, I'm preeeetty sure she won't understand what this whole deconstruction business is about.
"It's easy to understand" no, a lot of people won't get it. People can read Worm and not get the Reality Ensues moments, people can watch PMMM and have no idea why these girls are working for not!Satan and people can watch One Punch Man and not understand the satire.
Especially One Punch Man like do you know how many people complained how bad the Saitama vs Boros is like dude yeah Saitama freaking won that's the point!
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Evangelion isn't a deconstruction.
The dialogue Evangelion has with other mecha and Super Robot series isn't important to the emotional core of the series, or to the plot. Someone who sees Evangelion without knowing anything about giant robots is still going to grasp the basic relationships between the characters, just like you don't have to have read Cordwainer Smith to understand Evangelion, or dabbled in Jewish esotericism. You don't need to know Jet Alone is a reference to Jet Jaguar to understand that Ritsuko and Gendo sabotaged it, and Misato risked her life to stop it, which tells you a great deal about all three of those characters.
That is, Evangelion stands on its own as a series. So does Madoka. So does One-Punch Man.
That's why they have to be actual stories first. Whether or not EVN is a deconstruction (I don't think it is) it doesn't REQUIRE some level of robot competence to understand as a story. The Evas are even almost walking allegories more than monsters, and the story is a personal and philosophical one. If I don't view it as a deconstruction, but you do, have I 'stolen' its characteristic? Surely not - we just view it differently.
That Marines Orcs book went a fair bit over my head due to a lack of familiarity to the SPECIFIC jokes it was making about fantasy stories I'd never read, but I was still aware of what it was doing. I got 'fantasy pretty dumb' from it, but didn't get 'Pratchett books are pretty dumb'. It made me think about elements of the genre and the narrative still worked.
By contrast a lot of 'fan' deconstructions don't work at all unless you're already in love with whatever the target is, and sometimes you need to already be familiar with the specific 'problems' or 'unrealisms' it's talking about. This seems much weaker and more specific to me.
That Marines Orcs book went a fair bit over my head due to a lack of familiarity to the SPECIFIC jokes it was making about fantasy stories I'd never read, but I was still aware of what it was doing. I got 'fantasy pretty dumb' from it, but didn't get 'Pratchett books are pretty dumb'. It made me think about elements of the genre and the narrative still worked.
By contrast a lot of 'fan' deconstructions don't work at all unless you're already in love with whatever the target is, and sometimes you need to already be familiar with the specific 'problems' or 'unrealisms' it's talking about. This seems much weaker and more specific to me.
I think I got lost somewhere. What're the "How" and "What" supposed to mean in there? I get "Why does one write a good deconstruction" but "How" and "What" are lost on me.
I think it was more along the lines of asking "Why do these things happen in the story?" "How do they happen?" "What makes certain elements work like they do?"
Austin Powers is the most prominent deconstruction I can think of that essentially irradiated (by the admission of Daniel Craig) the thing it was deconstructing. Doesn't really feel pessimistic as far as I can recall.
Sometimes bashing it is the point. Sometimes bashing something is cutting to its heart.
There are loving deconstructions and ones based on some amount of disdain.
Take something like...Hard Men,or how women are treated in fantasy spaces; I see no reason why anyone should "love" these things since they can be odious. Some amount of empathy may be required but...love?
Ultimately, like with most writing "rules" it's "do it well" and "don't do it badly".
RoboRenee
Trans of gender
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- FFXIV, probably
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- She/Her
At the same time though, what's the point of a deconstruction of something like that? And what makes it a deconstruction instead of a story where Hard Men making Hard Decisions isn't the best option or one where women in fantasy are treated in a manner very different from the norm?
Mechasaurian
Big Bossu
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People like me were dissatisfied with One Punch Man's final episode because it felt jarringly lacking in substance compared to earlier episodes, and tired to make up for it with extra flash. Yes, I noticed the parallels between Boros and Saitama. No, it was nowhere near enough to carry the episode on it's back.
The point? What is the point to any work of art? Some artists like things and play them straight, some artists like things and deconstruct them, some artists dislike things and deconstruct them. The point is the same as any other art.
As for how you can tell a deconstruction...it's a bit like pornography; you know. Austin Powers isn't just a silly movie. If you've watched James Bond you can tell. Deconstructions will twist the tropes of their target genre in a way that's recognizable. If the work has the usual Hard Man and goes out of its way to show his way isn't working and make an argument as to why...it may be a deconstruction. If if stuffs all the justifications that genre uses and then tosses them on their heads...more likely to be a deconstruction.
RoboRenee
Trans of gender
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- FFXIV, probably
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- She/Her
In deconstructing such an idea, what is the target audience? What message is intended to be conveyed?
Not 'how can you tell'. What, structurally, makes a work a deconstruction of the traditional role of women in fantasy rather than a work that doesn't use women in that way?
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Lol, unless you're directly working for a publisher or a network the "target audience" is anyone who says "Hey, this looks interesting. I think I'll read it."
Directly examining sexist tropes in fantasy is what. Hard to tell you without examples. Howabout.
A story about a female chosen one who is prevent from doing her chosen one duties due to patriarchal roadblocks. Thus, dark lord wins.
A story about female magic users, examining how absurd real world gender roles and misogyny are in a setting where women are just as likely to shoot fire from their hands as men.
A story that goes completely meta and skewers the role of writers in imposing their own biases about women in a genre where they need not exist.
Are these not deconstructive? What exactly are yo asking anyway?
RoboRenee
Trans of gender
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- FFXIV, probably
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- She/Her
If the primary purpose of a work is to deconstruct something, there is inevitably a target audience.
Deconstructive elements are present in almost any work of fiction that aspires to be more than a decent if forgettable read, whether as a side effect of approaching the subject slightly differently or as a deliberate aspect of the work. A deconstruction, however, would be a work built around those elements. If the element is "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions" or "women are kind of treated like shit in fantasy", how does one go about building the story primarily around the deconstruction of these elements?
What is the message of a reference? What is the target audience of an homage or reconstruction?
It varies.
As I said, taking the tropes that make up the traditional role and subverting, criticizing or lampooning them.
I see a deconstruction as being more involved than just showing an alternate path (though the two can overlap and something may deconstruct elements of a work without necessarily setting out to be a full blown deconstruction). The movie that shows the woman without boob plate is not as involved as the one that shows boob plate being ineffectual (in a humorous way or otherwise) and points out the problems with the clothing and fighting style of certain characters.