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Yes, Black Ops 2, the game which includes a scene where, fueled by rage, your character becomes nigh-invulnerable and is given infinite ammo and subsequently murders an army of dudes with a machete - that's a game that reconstructed the first person shooter.
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Feb 7, 2014 06:44
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They managed to so badly misunderstand the concept of deconstruction that they made up a term to be their incorrect definition's opposite. That's impressive.
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Feb 7, 2014 07:02
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That paragraph of 'analysis' read like a particularly boring early high school-level essay. That got an F.
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Feb 7, 2014 07:17
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I wasn't sure what a Reconstruction was, so I went to the helpful trope page to learn.quote:Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds Reconstruction returns to playing tropes straight that were deconstructed in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Okay, so a reconstruction is defined by... not being grimdark? posted: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. It deconstructs the trope and then reconstructs it and then it deconstructs the reconstruction and then reconstructs the deconstructed reconstruction posted:Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes the dumb blonde who gets killed in horror movies and reconstructs her as an action heroine, then deconstructs the supergirl concept by giving her real world problems. Okay, so a reconstruction is defined by... having more sperging and gender-changing fetishes? posted:The Whateley Universe is basically a reconstruction of the superhero genre, starting with kids at a Superhero School and an attempt to define realistic powers and the Applied Phlebotinum to make them work. (And Gender Benders galore.) We tropers are the true reconstructers |
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Feb 7, 2014 07:26
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Cupcakes is the most infamous fan fiction of all time? I doubt that when there's heavy hitters like Agony in Pink and My Immortal out there. Or the crown jewel HALF LIFE: FULL LIFE CONSEQUENCES.
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Feb 7, 2014 07:29
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Arcsquad12 posted:Cupcakes is the most infamous fan fiction of all time? I doubt that when there's heavy hitters like Agony in Pink and My Immortal out there. Or the crown jewel HALF LIFE: FULL LIFE CONSEQUENCES. Lottery of Babylon posted:I wasn't sure what a Reconstruction was, so I went to the helpful trope page to learn.
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Feb 7, 2014 07:38
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Leofish posted:Hey, at least this analysis openly admits that this torture porn has become "so ingrained in the Friendship Is Magic fandom" that it is "such a decisively piercing part of the Brony subculture" instead of throwing their hands up and saying "rule 34" as if it's some kind of excuse. It's actually not too bad an analysis as far as explaing why it's a popular story, so already that makes it better than most analysis that tropers are capable of producing. Shame that the effort is being wasted on justifying torture porn based on a children's show. As I was looking for stuff to mock, the trope analysis page for The Sociopath has a lengthy discussion on what a sociopath is and what the neurological underpinnings of it might be, but utterly fails to tie it to how sociopathy is used in fiction. Bonus, there's a literal tl;dr about halfway down the page before the writer gains their second wind and keeps on going. It's not analysis, it's some sperg just rattling off a list of things they know about sociopathy. EDIT: Re: Deconstruction chat I don't think tropers necessarily intended 'deconstruction' to mean grimdark to begin with, instead taking ideas to their logical extreme and applying real-life consequences to the story. For example, NGE would have the logical extremes (treating the children that pilot giant military machines as soldiers) and real-life consequences (desertion of duty gets people hurt/killed). It's just that this trends towards a grimdark story, so tropers (chronically unable to understand nuance) conflate the two terms. Madoka, another anime that they like to bandy about as a "deconstruction", is just a magical girl show with a level of grimdark applied to the setting. It doesn't really address conventions of the genre, at least to my knowlege. Anyway, there's an actually useful term in what tropers call "deconstruction", even though it's distinct from what postmodernists mean when they use the term. The academic meaning was explained earlier in the thread, but we're far enough in that now would be a good time to explain it again! 
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Feb 7, 2014 07:40
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The Leper Colon V posted:Cupcakes is basically Agony In Pink With MLP so, I dunno. So not only is it a lovely torture porn fetish, but they were so lazy they just ripped off another crappy shock fanfic?
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Feb 7, 2014 07:40
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Lottery of Babylon posted:But there's potentially something more behind it. Ever since the first episodes aired, Friendship Is Magic gained popularity amongst teen and adult males not out of some misplaced ironic bent, but by dent of the strength of the writing and the strong characterization. Further, despite its original target audience of little girls, the show has never shied away from the darker side of Equestria: our protagonists reside at the edge of a deep, dark forest full of things your worst nightmares would be hesitant to touch, there exists wanton Gods of chaos, filthy scavenger dogs who enslave hapless ponies who wander too far into their territory, and the writers take particular care in mentally deconstructing their protagonists' psyches to pieces, with all the zest that Supernatural's writers put into that very subject. "by dent" 
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Feb 7, 2014 08:01
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Venusian Weasel posted:EDIT: Re: Deconstruction chat In their own words: Laconic: Deconstruction posted:Applying (according to the author) more realistic-world causality to an idea. Laconic: Reconstruction posted:Applying the lessons learned from Deconstruction to help improve a concept. So you're right, but I still don't get what "reconstruction" is supposed to be, let alone "Decon-Recon Switch" or "Indecisive Deconstruction".
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Feb 7, 2014 10:51
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I think they intend for 'reconstruction' to mean 'Does a Trope, in a non-standard manner'.
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Feb 7, 2014 11:43
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The impression that I've gotten from five threads' worth of this bullshit is that "deconstruction" is employing a concept as cynically as possible and "reconstruction" is just playing it straight if cynicism has become the norm. There's really no point in trying to be more definite; Tropers themselves have only the most tenuous grasp on these already nebulous concepts to begin with (the better to spam them on as many pages as possible).
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Feb 7, 2014 11:53
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Apple Tree posted:It's a bit of an oversimplification, I'd say. You can have a conflict of right versus wrong without having a conflict of good versus evil: a person can be a 'villian' while being portrayed with complexity and humanity. It depends how you define the term, of course. 'Villain' is often used to imply a fairly straightforward, pantomime sense of morality, and if you're using it in that sense, then yes, that suggests good versus evil - but on the other hand, if you do that well, you can still have a good story. Even a subtle one, if you write with enough psychological insight.  Other than that a very insightful post, thank you. Lottery of Babylon posted:I wasn't sure what a Reconstruction was, so I went to the helpful trope page to learn. Stop it, you're poisoning my mind! 
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Feb 7, 2014 12:26
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Darth TNT posted:I'm sorry, but I am unfamiliar with the phrase "question of fiat". Could you explain to me what exactly that means? English isn't my native tongue and any searches on the web just get the me the car brand. 'Question of fiat' isn't really a phrase, so you're not missing anything. 'Fiat' means making something be so simply by stating that it shall be so, as in 'fiat lux' (let there be light). Authors get to use fiat a lot: something is so in their fictional world because they create it and they say so. So when I said 'A designated villain whose villainy is more a question of fiat than of storytelling', what I meant was a villain who we're supposed to see as villainous because the story simply presents them as the villain rather than actually depicting them as villainous. Narrative fiat isn't necessarily bad; in imaginative literature it's often the only way to get things done. Why are there talking honey badgers in this story? Narrative fiat: deal with it or go read something else. It can save a lot of unnecessarily picky details of the kind that tropers love. But a villain who's a villain by fiat rather than by actual character writing is kind of crap. Does that make sense?
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Feb 7, 2014 12:38
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In troperspeak, it's like this: take Evangelion. For the better part of 30-odd years, giant robot shows had been adventure and excitement - kid finds giant robot, uses it to save the day, everyone laughs. There were exceptions, but by and large, that was the formula. Then Eva comes along, takes everything about the genre and plays it straight. Kids piloting giant robots are closer to child soldiers, one false move can destroy half the city and the guys in charge aren't even remotely altruistic. That's the deconstruction, taking the individual aspects of the genre and showing what they'd be like in the real world. Then comes Gurren Lagann. Made by the same company who did NGE, it's almost an apology for the earlier work. Same tropes, as the original shows of yore, but updated and played more triumphantly and heroically. That is a reconstruction. Does it make any quantifiable sense on anything beyond an emotional level? Nope. Do tropers care? Hell no. Now let me tell you why Kamina is one of the greatest protagonists of any medium and why he shouldn't have died.
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Feb 7, 2014 13:38
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:In troperspeak, it's like this: take Evangelion. For the better part of 30-odd years, giant robot shows had been adventure and excitement - kid finds giant robot, uses it to save the day, everyone laughs. There were exceptions, but by and large, that was the formula. Then Eva comes along, takes everything about the genre and plays it straight. Kids piloting giant robots are closer to child soldiers, one false move can destroy half the city and the guys in charge aren't even remotely altruistic. That's the deconstruction, taking the individual aspects of the genre and showing what they'd be like in the real world. BUT KAMINA HAD TO DIE THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
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Feb 7, 2014 14:24
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So "deconstruction" and "reconstruction" are how you describe the entertainment industry cycle if you're a pseudo-intellectual. Got it.
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Feb 7, 2014 14:48
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Oh I see, reconstruction = a happy thing happens, deconstruction = a sad thing happens. Also something about anime.Reconstruction posted:Cho Chang in Harry Potter served to deconstruct the Relationship Sue trope by being Harry's perfect match - with whom he ended being incompatible with. Ginny Weasley on the other hand reconstructed the idea. She realised Harry would never be interested in her and instead settled for becoming a better friend to him. Because of that, Harry finally starts noticing her and they end up Happily Married with three kids. It goes to show that the Relationship Sue can exist as a person outside of being someone's perfect match and reminds people why ending up with one of these characters would be a good thing. Today when I was walking to the store I stubbed my toe, deconstructing the notion that feet are good at walking. But on the walk back from the store I didn't stub my toe, which is a reconstruction. An Indecisive Deconstruction and a Decon-Recon Switch are things in which some scenes are happy and some scenes are sad.
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Feb 7, 2014 15:15
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Oh I see, reconstruction = a happy thing happens, deconstruction = a sad thing happens. Also something about anime.
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Feb 7, 2014 15:20
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I have to work this Saturday, which subverts Weekends. But it's switched and averted because I still have Sunday off.
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Feb 7, 2014 15:30
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Venusian Weasel posted:Madoka, another anime that they like to bandy about as a "deconstruction", is just a magical girl show with a level of grimdark applied to the setting. It doesn't really address conventions of the genre, at least to my knowlege. Anyway, there's an actually useful term in what tropers call "deconstruction", even though it's distinct from what postmodernists mean when they use the term. Well, actually...  Madoka is a deconstruction of the magical girl genre as I understand the definition. It addresses the thematic expectations of those works (self-sacrifice and personal responsibility in the context of gendered values like purity and virtue) and turns them on their head in a hyper-reality born out of a cynical view of the world. (The world will take your heroic ambitions and girlish naivete and abuse them, the despair from your exposure to the real world will "mature" you from a magical girl into a witch, and although your sacrifice may save other lives day to day, there will always be more people to save, you can never mess up, your suffering must be felt alone and ultimately no one will remember or care about you in the ways that really matter.) Deconstruction wasn't its initial goal, but then it wasn't the goal of NGE either, in both cases the aim was just to tell a good story. For instance, Sayaka's character, who is really fascinating--  Anyway. On topic, the TV-tropesiest game to ever TV trope is on Steam now. I don't remember if I shared my 20-minute experience with this disasterpiece in this thread or not. But top to bottom, it's Tropers.exe if you want a laugh.
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Feb 7, 2014 16:40
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Mods, rename me Y2K Orphan tia
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Feb 7, 2014 17:10
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DStecks posted:Mods, rename me Y2K Orphan tia Does reporter girl have a mouth, or is that a sort of rainbow grumpycat mouth just under her eyes?
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Feb 7, 2014 18:26
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Jay O posted:Well, actually... Yeah, but you're talking about the deeper workings of the show, not the surface level. I can almost guarantee you that tropers calling it a deconstruction aren't referring to the points you bring up. It works as one when you really think about it, but they're just calling it a deconstruction because it's a grimdark setting in a usually cheery genre. I probably shouldn't be pushing the issue on what constitutes a Trope as defined by tropers, since it is kind of  , but it is an interesting concept, even if they can't agree on exactly what it means either. I've gut a gut feeling that there's a broader difference between the two shows, since Anno was writer who was very familiar with the giant robot genre and was writing a show that took genre expectations into account, while Urobochi's storytelling has always been grimdark. I think that produces a slight difference in the worldview expressed between the two shows. Then again, raising a distinction is utterly pointless.Why am I even talking about this? I haven't watched anime in years. Oh no, I've fallen off the bandwagon. This is how a heroin addict must feel. oh god im talking about anime help i cant stop myself dont put me in adtrw
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Feb 7, 2014 19:21
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Venusian Weasel posted:oh god im talking about anime help i cant stop myself dont put me in adtrw poo poo man anime is my livelihood and i don't even go in there. 
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Feb 7, 2014 19:32
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How about this to ease your mind? Anno was a depressed lunatic who started out making a nice robot show that took itself seriously, and went further and further off the deep end as psychopathic otaku continued to threaten and harass him constantly as the show progressed. Finally he just gave up and decided to indulge the freaks, turning the show into a convoluted mess of ideas that were just as much about giving the giant middle finger to his fans as they were about breaking down the conventions of the giant robot genre. And then you end it with End of Eva which can only be described as the most elaborate trolling ever conceived. An overly pretentious show and film which resulted from the depression of the creator and a violent mix of going way over budget and dealing with some of the most obnoxious fans ever. And the only reason that tropers like it is because they think Asuka's hot and Rei is their personal waifu. I don't personally like the show at all, but I can see where it started to go loopy. Tropers will scream "but that's the poooooint!", and I'll say "yeah, but if the people making the show hadn't been insane or mismanaged their money so bad, they might have come up with something better. People like you drove them to do this." I think that Eva had a weird effect on anyone involved with it. I remember seeing a video in the Awkward Ugly and Gross thread that showed Tiffany Grant, Asuka's english VA, with a room dedicated to the character. It was loving creepy seeing the woman with basically a shrine to her character.
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Feb 7, 2014 19:39
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Is there an actual pop culture analysis term for what tropers would call a Deconstruction-Reconstruction Cycle? Like, for instance, the shift between serious and campy Batman media, or how you went from 'classic' sci fi media like Star Trek to 'gritty' sci fi media like Farscape to 're-classic' sci fi media like Mass Effect?
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Feb 7, 2014 19:41
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In what world is Farscape "Gritty Sci Fi"? The show where they make jokes about pooping alongside fighting giant iguanas and australians? If you want a good example of the shift between the two, you need only look at the transition from Star Trek to the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Since the lead writer of BSG was Ron Moore, a Star Trek TNG and DS9 veteran, it's a lot easier to make the compare and contrast between the two franchises. There's no bridge with a window, just the CIC buried deep in the ship. There's no lasers, just machine guns and nukes. Fuel and supplies are a constant problem, so scavenging and raids are the only way they can get food, unlike Star Trek replicators. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 19:45
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Okay, poor adjective I guess, but compared to Star Trek type stuff, it's a lot more about morally ambiguous people, unpleasant situations, and a future that isn't as nice to live in. Exchange Farscape for, I don't know, Alien or something.
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Feb 7, 2014 19:51
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Well, even DS9 to an extent was a reaction to what came before. It shows the Federation on the frontier, where they don't have the luxury of just flying off to the next adventure without feeling the consequences of their actions. A lot of Science Fiction from the mid 90s onwards can be seen as a reaction to the utopian ideals set down by TOS and TNG. Space Above and Beyond was pretty much World War 2 Pacific in nature, DS9 and Babylon 5 dealt with lasting consequences, and Farscape was, like you said, not a very nice place to live, even if the show was goofy. Hell, Stargate SG1 was about a military operation. Battlestar Galactica is kind of the culmination of this reaction to Star Trek, the apex of anti-trek ideals. Too bad the last few seasons sucked compared to the first. That's the best I can think of for your question about shifts in Science Fiction.
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Feb 7, 2014 19:58
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Arcsquad12 posted:How about this to ease your mind? Anno was a depressed lunatic who started out making a nice robot show that took itself seriously, and went further and further off the deep end as psychopathic otaku continued to threaten and harass him constantly as the show progressed. Finally he just gave up and decided to indulge the freaks, turning the show into a convoluted mess of ideas that were just as much about giving the giant middle finger to his fans as they were about breaking down the conventions of the giant robot genre. Actually, Evangelion was my gateway drug to the world of anime in my early teens, but even then I appreciated it for its characterization and story, not because omg teh rei. Unfortunately it ended up kind of spiralling out of hand and before I knew it I was depressed and in a shell that took a couple years to break completely. By the end I was watching stuff like Zetsubou-sensei. Which, admittedly isn't as bad as the concept could be, but still. I think there's just something about the anime fandom that's really toxic to people. Since I've quit, I've tried just tried to keep the whole thing at arms' length or I just end up going on about it. To tie this back into the thread's purpose, that might be one of the reasons that people get hung up so much on TVTropes. It's a community where they know the material and have someone to talk to about it, and that's really comforting for people with social anxiety or have a hard time fitting in in the real world. It's just that they end up in an incredibly toxic community and feel like they have to defend the worst parts because it's all they have. Of course there's shitheads, the hugbox environment encourages it. But I think for the most part it's just young geeks who don't understand the Geek Social Fallacies and just want a place to talk.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:10
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Oh yeah, I guess that is another reason that Eva is so endearing to Tropers. Shinji is basically a self insert for every sad, depressed, sexually frustrated teenager that the show was catering to. Being older than that, however, all I can say is "man the gently caress up shinji and stop wallowing in self pity." Might explain my lack of tolerance for Tropers. They're all loving Shinji's.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:18
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Djeser posted:Is there an actual pop culture analysis term for what tropers would call a Deconstruction-Reconstruction Cycle? Like, for instance, the shift between serious and campy Batman media, or how you went from 'classic' sci fi media like Star Trek to 'gritty' sci fi media like Farscape to 're-classic' sci fi media like Mass Effect? I don't think it's something ascribable to the media creators, it's just part of broader cultural trends. The "dark and gritty" post-9/11 era is finally drawing to a close, and I suspect the whole "hipster ironic appreciation" trend is simply how the culture is handling taking itself less seriously, without thinking of itself as dumb. Arcsquad12 posted:Oh yeah, I guess that is another reason that Eva is so endearing to Tropers. Shinji is basically a self insert for every sad, depressed, sexually frustrated teenager that the show was catering to. Being older than that, however, all I can say is "man the gently caress up shinji and stop wallowing in self pity." Might explain my lack of tolerance for Tropers. They're all loving Shinji's. I love when people say things that reveal they clearly don't know what the gently caress they're talking about. Yeah, nerds tend to see Shinji as a reflection of themselves, and they hate him for it. Otaku detest Shinji more than any other anime character ever. The whole point of Eva is that Shinji cannot handle the responsibility entrusted to him; he is the teenage hero entrusted to save the world, and he fucks it up.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:30
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Anime isn't my strong point. Yeah, I fully admit that I don't have a doctorate in Evangelion studies. I don't like the show, and I hate the rabid fans even more. So I didn't "get" that you're supposed to hate Shinji. Sue me. Annoying is still annoying.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:35
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Well, here's the thing - I never particularly identified with Shinji. Empathized, certainly, but I realized he was a walking trainwreck and most of the bad things that happened were the result of lovely decisions on his part. I think the parts of the show I enjoyed most were the conclusion and movie, the parts of the show that really felt experimental in their storytelling. The show that really knocked me off-kilter was Welcome to the NHK. I had an extreme reaction to the show, and I think that was the one where I really started retreating. Which is weird, because Satou is really even more of a walking trainwreck. I'm not going to disagree with your assessment, though, because I've seen almost that exact explanation given by a troper-y person I knew at the time. E: maybe me and my friends at the time were empaths? Venusian Weasel fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 20:37
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Self-loathing is a hell of a drug, C.F. All tropers.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:41
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Arcsquad12 posted:Anime isn't my strong point. Yeah, I fully admit that I don't have a doctorate in Evangelion studies. I don't like the show, and I hate the rabid fans even more. So I didn't "get" that you're supposed to hate Shinji. Sue me. Annoying is still annoying. ... I think you're supposed to sympathize him because he's a essentially a child soldier.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:53
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rjryan3 posted:... I think you're supposed to sympathize him because he's a essentially a child soldier. That jerks off over a comatose girl. In a scene that's been called a defining moment in his character progression. Yeah, no thanks. The show isn't for everyone and it sure as hell isn't for me. Can we move on? Sorry I brought it up. Let the people who know what they're talking about continue this discussion, and I'll try to get back to making fun of bad writers.
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Feb 7, 2014 21:00
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Some few years ago, I remember reading this one part on the Deconstruction page on how Tales of Vesperia's Estelle was a Deconstruction of a Reconstruction of a Deconstruction of the Princess archetype or whatever. By then, I was already experiencing TvTropes fatigue, but that was the point where I just stopped going there altogether. Incidentally, does the real life section of the page list the reconstruction of the American South as a deconstruction of the concept of reconstruction? 
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Feb 7, 2014 21:01
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MinistryofLard posted:I continue to be amazed that people look at the Evil Overlord List and, rather than chuckling and saying "Ha hah, movie villains do do that a lot, yeah." thinks "This is good writing material!" What gets me is that when Tropers do this sort of Genre Savvy Lampshade Hanging poo poo, it always has the air of "Look at how loving clever I am." It's not about surprising the audience by defying expectations (as in the "35 minutes ago" scene in Watchmen); it's about jerking off to how brilliant they are for noticing/not following a cliche.
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Feb 7, 2014 21:03
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