Thought of the Day

If you're going to use a work of fiction to deconstruct and criticize the conventions of a genre - especially if you set up a fake-out by presenting it initially as a standard example of the genre and then doing a "gotcha" reveal fifteen minutes in and proceeding from there - it's kind of a requirement to actually deconstruct those conventions and not just have the characters complain about them while unironically acting out those exact same conventions.

I mean, if it's done well I'm a great fan of having the story I'm reading turn out to not be the story I thought I was reading. And I frequently love it when characters turn out to not be the people you thought they were, especially when it gives me the opportunity to revisit the whole thing from an entirely new perspective once the reveal occurs. But not when the reveal takes the form of "The story you set out to read is shallow and fake. Were you getting to like those characters? Guess what! They're all actually nothing like that. See, this guy's name isn't even Pierre, it's Josh!" Without actually being any less predictable or shallow than the original genre.

Bah.