Uhm, so this thread just happened...

[DinoRexMax DinoRexMax]

Deconstructive millennial writing is shit, because deconstructive millennial writers are shit. I could write a 9000 page thesis as to why, but the point is that you should really stop hiring people who are ashamed of the things that they're working on. Certain characters and their stories have been around for well over a century (or in the case of myths and folktales, millennia) so it's hard for that lengthy game of telephone not to have some kind of misstep over the years, Comic books are the prime example of this idea, with heroes such as Superman and Batman are more like pastiches of not just their source comics but also movie, video games, television, and radio shows (i.e. Kryptonite is actually from an episode of "The Adventures of Superman" radio serial from 1943). But there's a difference between giving an explanation for their capes, and going the full X-Men movie route and making fun of the stupid comic book costumes (which do not exist to make sense, they exist to attact the attention of the audience and invoke olympian strongmen).

I feel as if both creators and audiences are so afraid of being made fun of for what they like or work on, that they desperately clamber to reductively dismiss or mock their favourite franchises like: "Oh, yeah, naw, bro. I totally get that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is gay and retarded, bro. I'm like, totally in on the joke too guys, hahah! Like, King Crimson, how does that work right? Looks like Araki forgot again! Hahah!" or something to that effect.

I don't expect the illustrious members of this forum to be afraid of what anybody has to say about what they like, but there's just something about that smug smirk those Dreamworks characters make just brings it out of me.

 

[dkpopman]

Totally feel this. It's 2026 and there were still games with that style of writing being shown at not-E3 this past week. It's so tired.

I think there was a time and a place for this kinda stuff. But like all bad ideas that somehow made money, they get drilled into the dirt infinitely.

 

[IyoTheHelpfulWolf]

It's tiring to me too. I'm certainly not against deconstruction or making fun of a trope, but there's a time and place and it isn't all the time. People are so scared of showing genuine enthusiasm for stuff because society has taught everyone not to show vulnerability or risk having your weaknesses taken advantage of or losing social capital. Everyone is on guard about everything.

 

[AceOfAces]

Part of the problem here is that "post-modernism" took over really hard in a lot of Western writing spaces, especially in academia, and it's just entirely unhealthy as a practice since the whole premise of post-modernism is that it rejects everything that came before it through "deconstruction". There's a pretty good essay about this that I'm constantly citing in my Masters, I'll attach it. It's worth reading and is also very funny.

EDIT: I should probably add some additional content here, you can do a good deconstruction but it requires you to love the topic. Martian Successor Nadesico is probably the best example I'm aware of. If you aren't intimately familiar with the subject matter then you lack the context to both poke fun at it and to know which threads should be pulled on to make an interesting story. This is why Nadesico works and Evangelion doesn't. (EVA also suffers from relying too heavily on references to Ultraman while borrowing huge chunks from Dynamic-era Super Robot series, which really confuses it and causes a lot of its intent to fall flat. If it picked a lane it would probably do fine, but Anno was never going to take his meds for long enough to do that.)

 

[IyoTheHelpfulWolf]

Part of the problem here is that "post-modernism" took over really hard in a lot of writing spaces, especially in academia, and it's just entirely unhealthy as a practice since the whole premise of post-modernism is that it rejects everything that came before it through "deconstruction". There's a pretty good essay about this that I'm constantly citing in my Masters, I'll attach it. It's worth reading and is also very funny.

Not all deconstruction is unhealthy. Sometimes re-examining existing tropes can actually create a worthwhile new work. The Simpsons was a deconstruction of family sitcom tropes and the first few seasons are genuinely good, but we don't think of it as a deconstruction anymore because that style of sitcom became the status quo and the Simpson got run into the ground. Madoka Magica is an eerie deconstruction of magical girl tropes, yet still retains and "reconstructs" some of them as still being valid within the context of the world it builds. The problem is psudo-intellectuals and people scared of being "cringe" feeling the need to preemptively deconstruct and ridicule everything all the time and with no desire to build something new with the pieces of what they deconstructed. Post-modernism is the status quo now, which defeats the entire purpose of it.

 

[dkpopman]

If you aren't intimately familiar with the subject matter then you lack the context to both poke fun at it and to know which threads should be pulled on to make an interesting story. This is why Nadesico works and Evangelion doesn't.

I personally don't see Evangelion as a deconstruction. The narrative deconstructs itself in an effort to look inward, but I don't think it deconstructs any genre tropes like people like to say it does.

I'm a little afraid to write more on this because I don't feel like I'm a deep enough otaku to have this opinion, but that's always the impression I've gotten.

 

[AceOfAces]

That's why I decoupled post-modernism from deconstruction.

I personally don't see Evangelion as a deconstruction. The narrative deconstructs itself in an effort to look inward, but I don't think it deconstructs any genre tropes like people like to say it does.

I'm a little afraid to write more on this because I don't feel like I'm a deep enough otaku to have this opinion, but that's always the impression I've gotten.

The stuff it's working on is 70s- and 80s-era Super Robot and toku stuff, so by the time it landed in 1994, especially in the west, there wasn't really much context. If you haven't gone well out of your way to research older series from literally 50 years ago then you're going to have a shallow opinion on this one just by virtue of lacking the context.

It's kind of like reading Odyssey without reading Iliad. You can do it, but your understanding of the text will be limited by the lack of context.

 

[Metroid_Hybrid]

Deconstruction may not be bad per se. However, like Ace put it, it's the post-modernist inclination to deconstruct something just for the sake of ridiculing the original, and not actually replacing it with anything of value. Like, the Simpsons may be a deconstruction of sorts, but it also created so much more, to the point where you don't even need to be familiar with with what they are referencing to find it enjoyable in itself (at least the first dozen seasons or so)..

 

[Disgaean]

What you are saying is that things lack "geniuine-tess" (amazing word speak skill I know) and are just afraid to be stupid, movies and AAA games always have to feel like they are in on the joke and meta.
Point is we need more stuff like that scene from madagascar where the gang goes to the subway and melman gets stuck on the door, crashes into the drumset and gets his head stuck in the clock.

 

[NOTthatHARD]

I will never understand why companies hire people who openly dislike the source material.

 

[DinoRexMax DinoRexMax]

Part of the problem here is that "post-modernism" took over really hard in a lot of writing spaces, especially in academia, and it's just entirely unhealthy as a practice since the whole premise of post-modernism is that it rejects everything that came before it through "deconstruction".

Evil cannot create, only corrupt.

Not to get another one of my threads closed, but this is a very Marxist way of viewing things. The idea of completely dissolving previously established ideas in order to supplant them with your own, primarily out of fear that ones new ideas can't hold against the tried and true concepts that came before. It's one of the horrid faces of modern writers, creative vampires who piggyback off of the marquee of a legacy franchise to get their foot through the door, constantly deriding older works through "decontruction" to pretend that they are avant-garde, while simultaneously stroking their egos and creating a stepping stone for other projects.

Martian Successor Nadesico is probably the best example I'm aware of.

Prince of Darkness is one of the hardest glowups in anime history, but Nadeisco is not a decontrstuction, it's a send-up and a loving tribute to space opera and mecha.

This is why Nadesico works and Evangelion doesn't.

I personally don't see Evangelion as a deconstruction. The narrative deconstructs itself in an effort to look inward, but I don't think it deconstructs any genre tropes like people like to say it does.

EVA is a deconstruction, similar to Boukurano in that it inspects the implications of throwing pubescent children into the fray of life-or-death situations, alongside the political angle of a world with such incredible concepts (something he bored us to tears with in Shin Godzilla).

However, it's not a particularly deep deconstruction, since all it really does is blankets itself in religious iconography to APPEAR deep but is really just "What if Mazinger Z, but fucked up?" with "What if children's cartoon, but fucked up?" being the most favoured flavour of lame "deconstruction".

I don't feel like I'm a deep enough otaku to have this opinion, but that's always the impression I've gotten.

You really worried about what a bunch of NERDS think? Fuck 'em, and their chinese cartoons. I but the majority of them don't even know what Anime really means, and how it's just a fake word they made up.

Not all deconstruction is unhealthy. Sometimes re-examining existing tropes can actually create a worthwhile new work.\

Deconstruction may not be bad per se.

No, it is not, but that goes without saying. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and a rule for every exception. The problem of course is the lack of respect. Putting a twist on an old idea is fine, but if done so with a sense of disdain or apathy is unfair. The people that created Rings of Power show no respect for Tolkien's work, he's just some old white guy that keeps outselling them for some reason they refuse to comprehent. The people who created the Castlevania show do not care about the video games, they though Grant Dynasty was stupid, Christianity is bad, and wanted to be working on literally any other Vampire story then this one. But hey, those dumbass video game fans will watch it, and it will pay the bills so we can work on something like else.

The Simpsons was a deconstruction of family sitcom tropes

Nope, it was a parody of sitcoms, ironically being a parody of the Cosby show, which in itself was an answer to "Married...With Children" which was a parody of....family sitcoms like "Leave it Beaver". Time is a flat circle, and everything eventually comes back around to start. The audience will adore classic hoaky sitcoms, causing them to grow prevalent and become the norm, which will cause a reaction in the form of parodies, which will then take the place of the classic sitcom. Once the parody takes over, the joke runs tired, and people long for the classic genuine sitcom again.

Madoka Magica is an eerie deconstruction of magical girl tropes, yet still retains and "reconstructs" some of them as still being valid within the context of the world it builds.

Right, but it all just amounted to "What if cartoon, but fucked up?" so like EVA, it's not a particularly DEEP deconstruction.

The problem is psudo-intellectuals and people scared of being "cringe" feeling the need to preemptively deconstruct and ridicule everything all the time and with no desire to build something new with the pieces of what they deconstructed. Post-modernism is the status quo now, which defeats the entire purpose of it.

Nail on the head, it would actually be MORE groundbreaking to have everything be played purposely straight and withouth a twist, but I'm far from the first person to say that in the past decade or so. The pseudo-intellectual comment is less about the creators and more about the audience, while the creators are trying to stand out and be avant-garde so they can pretend their more sophisticated wrtiers than they actually are.

 

[Princess Viola]

>this show is a deconstruction!
>look inside
>it's literally just the genre it's part of

 

[SpcDaicon SpcDaicon]

Deconstructive millennial writing is shit, because deconstructive millennial writers are shit. I could write a 9000 page thesis as to why, but the point is that you should really stop hiring people who are ashamed of the things that they're working on. Certain characters and their stories have been around for well over a century (or in the case of myths and folktales, millennia) so it's hard for that lengthy game of telephone not to have some kind of misstep over the years, Comic books are the prime example of this idea, with heroes such as Superman and Batman are more like pastiches of not just their source comics but also movie, video games, television, and radio shows (i.e. Kryptonite is actually from an episode of "The Adventures of Superman" radio serial from 1943). But there's a difference between giving an explanation for their capes, and going the full X-Men movie route and making fun of the stupid comic book costumes (which do not exist to make sense, they exist to attact the attention of the audience and invoke olympian strongmen).

I feel as if both creators and audiences are so afraid of being made fun of for what they like or work on, that they desperately clamber to reductively dismiss or mock their favourite franchises like: "Oh, yeah, naw, bro. I totally get that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is gay and retarded, bro. I'm like, totally in on the joke too guys, hahah! Like, King Crimson, how does that work right? Looks like Araki forgot again! Hahah!" or something to that effect.

I don't expect the illustrious members of this forum to be afraid of what anybody has to say about what they like, but there's just something about that smug smirk those Dreamworks characters make just brings it out of me.

I wouldn't say it's a problem with mordern writing but a problem with an overreliance on meta humor and self referencial joke, an specific type of writing that tends to be percivied as witty but, if you try to sound witty all the time, it can wear off real fast and just sound pretentious.

Selfaware humor and meta humor only work if they are weaved into the narrative and are not the sole focus. Many times it seems like the writers setup entire scenarious just to make this type of quip. It gets old fast and you if you make all your dramatic buildup just a setup for jokes, they will never have weight.

Part of the problem here is that "post-modernism" took over really hard in a lot of Western writing spaces, especially in academia, and it's just entirely unhealthy as a practice since the whole premise of post-modernism is that it rejects everything that came before it through "deconstruction". There's a pretty good essay about this that I'm constantly citing in my Masters, I'll attach it. It's worth reading and is also very funny.

Imma be real with you chief, those "post-modernism" and "deconstruction" definitions you are using are more akin to their internet usages than their academic roots.
No, post-modernism does not simply "rejects everything that came before", it simply analyze things with a critical lens to reach a conclusion. While modernism was preocupied with making affirmations about things to set truths, post-modernism strives to go beyond and break them down, investigate and analyze to discover what make those truths, truths. A modern man speaks of truths and universal laws, a post-modern man question them, not necessarily to deny them, but to better understand them.

In the same vein, a deconstruction is not simply subvertion of expectations or taking something and make it upside down. Deconstrucion, in the original e truest sense, aims to pit two oposing sides together that are often put in dichotomies and analyze the root of their differences and how we percieve those oposing ideas.

Let's take the classic "show, don't tell". Here we have "show" in oposition to "tell", having "show" used as better alternative while "tell" in a lesser option. A deconstruction would strive to understand the root of this attribution of value between these two concepts and question if they really are so different from oneanother or if we can even decide if one is good and the other is bad.

Martian Successor Nadesico is probably the best example I'm aware of. If you aren't intimately familiar with the subject matter then you lack the context to both poke fun at it and to know which threads should be pulled on to make an interesting story. This is why Nadesico works and Evangelion doesn't.

Eva is not a deconstruction, it was never intended to be one and wasn't even the first one to do what it did. Nadesico is just a parody, it plays around with tropes from old robot anime but it also play those tropes straight in a mix of homage and meta humor.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

I will never understand why companies hire people who openly dislike the source material.

That's because the out-of-touch old men at the top think they are dealing with undiscovered geniuses who just happen to "get it" — happens on every industry.

 

[SpcDaicon SpcDaicon]

>this show is a deconstruction!
>look inside
>it's literally just the genre it's part of

>it's literally just the genre it's part of....but evil

 

[dkpopman]

I regret trying to discuss Eva lol... Always a bad idea.

Never seen this many Anno dislikers in one place, that's kinda fun!

 

[Princess Viola]

I can't believe there are still people who say NGE was a deconstruction in the big 2026.

Like how is it a deconstruction? It's not actually deconstructing anything about the genre, unless you just have the most shallow stereotypical views of mecha as a genre. It's a love letter to the genre more than anything.

Like Anno and the others at Gainax were and are huge ass mecha and tokusatsu (and 70s British televised science-fiction) nerds.

 

[Metroid_Hybrid]

Imma be real with you chief, those "post-modernism" and "deconstruction" definitions you are using are more akin to their internet usages than their academic roots.
No, post-modernism does not simply "rejects everything that came before", it simply analyze things with a critical lens to reach a conclusion. While modernism was preocupied with making affirmations about things to set truths, post-modernism strives to go beyond and break them down, investigate and analyze to discover what make those truths, truths. A modern man speaks of truths and universal laws, a post-modern man question them, not necessarily to deny them, but to better understand them.

In the same vein, a deconstruction is not simply subvertion of expectations or taking something and make it upside down. Deconstrucion, in the original e truest sense, aims to pit two oposing sides together that are often put in dichotomies and analyze the root of their differences and how we percieve those oposing ideas.

Not really. Most of the biggest names of Post-Modernism, such as Derrida & Foucault, heavily pushed the idea that there is no such thing as objective "truth." Hence their whole mission was to destroy by deconstruction, and they dressed up a bunch of nonsense with a bunch of flowery language that would confuse most people for decades. They used the same thing to "deconstruct" things like 'age of consent,' because they were also pedos..

 

[NOTthatHARD]

Evil cannot create, only corrupt.

Not to get another one of my threads closed, but this is a very Marxist way of viewing things. The idea of completely dissolving previously established ideas in order to supplant them with your own, primarily out of fear that ones new ideas can't hold against the tried and true concepts that came before. It's one of the horrid faces of modern writers, creative vampires who piggyback off of the marquee of a legacy franchise to get their foot through the door, constantly deriding older works through "decontruction" to pretend that they are avant-garde, while simultaneously stroking their egos and creating a stepping stone for other projects.


Prince of Darkness is one of the hardest glowups in anime history, but Nadeisco is not a decontrstuction, it's a send-up and a loving tribute to space opera and mecha.


EVA is a deconstruction, similar to Boukurano in that it inspects the implications of throwing pubescent children into the fray of life-or-death situations, alongside the political angle of a world with such incredible concepts (something he bored us to tears with in Shin Godzilla).

However, it's not a particularly deep deconstruction, since all it really does is blankets itself in religious iconography to APPEAR deep but is really just "What if Mazinger Z, but fucked up?" with "What if children's cartoon, but fucked up?" being the most favoured flavour of lame "deconstruction".

You really worried about what a bunch of NERDS think? Fuck 'em, and their chinese cartoons. I but the majority of them don't even know what Anime really means, and how it's just a fake word they made up.


No, it is not, but that goes without saying. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and a rule for every exception. The problem of course is the lack of respect. Putting a twist on an old idea is fine, but if done so with a sense of disdain or apathy is unfair. The people that created Rings of Power show no respect for Tolkien's work, he's just some old white guy that keeps outselling them for some reason they refuse to comprehent. The people who created the Castlevania show do not care about the video games, they though Grant Dynasty was stupid, Christianity is bad, and wanted to be working on literally any other Vampire story then this one. But hey, those dumbass video game fans will watch it, and it will pay the bills so we can work on something like else.

Nope, it was a parody of sitcoms, ironically being a parody of the Cosby show, which in itself was an answer to "Married...With Children" which was a parody of....family sitcoms like "Leave it Beaver". Time is a flat circle, and everything eventually comes back around to start. The audience will adore classic hoaky sitcoms, causing them to grow prevalent and become the norm, which will cause a reaction in the form of parodies, which will then take the place of the classic sitcom. Once the parody takes over, the joke runs tired, and people long for the classic genuine sitcom again.

Right, but it all just amounted to "What if cartoon, but fucked up?" so like EVA, it's not a particularly DEEP deconstruction.

Nail on the head, it would actually be MORE groundbreaking to have everything be played purposely straight and withouth a twist, but I'm far from the first person to say that in the past decade or so. The pseudo-intellectual comment is less about the creators and more about the audience, while the creators are trying to stand out and be avant-garde so they can pretend their more sophisticated wrtiers than they actually are.

This whole post reminds me of the Devil May Cry netflix anime and how a random nobody (Adi
Shankar) wanted to remake Devil May Cry and make it his "own" project, that's why he was so angry when Devil May Cry 5 was announced because he couldn't gaslight people into thinking he whas the father of DMC anymore.

It's all about this talentless nobodies with "main character sindrome" that want to make every story about themselves, while also hijacking other people's creations and changing them to fit their narrative and ideologies.