Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Inkblot: A lot of these examples should be removed. This isn't It Just Bugs Me! with a sarcastic tone!

Jordan: Granting that this is the "dark side of the wiki", but I still think that the Inconvenient Truth example should go.

It's not exactly a warping of an Aesop as much as it is pointing out its Unfortunate Implications. Movies like that are a disservice to the man-made global warming cause - if it's so dangerous, if it's so real, why all the lies, deception and hypocrisy about it? Then again, this wiki is full of hypocritically leftist bias (look no further than Fox News Liberal, a trope that needs to be renamed ASAP if The War on Straw is to be anything but a laughable self-parody), so a little truth from the right can't hurt.
Removed it... as you said, it's not a warping of an in-text aesop, which is the point of this page. Saying that one side of a heated debate professes "a terrible message to the kids at home" is Flame Bait, and makes the page less fun.
Restored it. Pointing out the Unfortunate Implications is a large part of the aesop-warping, as can be seen in many of the different examples on the page. Plus, I understand that some people really don't like having certain topics touched, but this wiki isn't an exclusive playground for certain viewpoints. This isn't Wikipedia nor the Daily Kos.
This isn't even the main Tropes page - it's Darth Wiki. Flame Bait is the name of the game.
Don't you think that the Godwin's Law violation at the end of the aesop warping implies that it's not supposed to be taken seriously, and that it is a parody of people who think that way?

Charred Knight: Deleted it because its not Warp That Aesop its just hating Al Gore and Liberals. I don't care how much you hate liberals, keep it to yourself, and no Flame Bait is not the name of the game here. The point of Warp That Aesop was to take something out of context and to make it look like it was the intent of the Director and writer, it is not trying to piss of liberals. I don't want to see this place turn into a flame war just because someone has to behave like a sterotypical republican. You do not only a disservice to yourself, but your viewpoints, by acting like this.

Inkblot: So you left alone all the other examples that violate the purpose of this page, but removed that one. Why?

Seth: I'm curious as to what the deleted example was?

Rothul: I don't even get The Order Of The Stick example... Just about everyone hates Miko and Redcloak's Anti-Villain status is a subversion of the Always Chaotic Evil things.

Peteman: First off, Miko's more a YMMV character, given that a lot of fans do like her (and a lot of fans hate her also). And the genocide thing I think is referring to what the Paladins did to the goblins that were around the bearer of the Crimson Mantle.

Fakename: I object to the TTGL entry here. It implies the stated moral isn't true in real life.

Lale: I know this is the Darth Wiki, but this page should still stick to its original intentions instead of becoming "list everything you don't like about a show." Finding warped Aesops by taking things out of context etc. is fun and interesting to read, but the page is becoming boring and rant-y. The paragraph-long examples should go, for one.

Idler: I assume it's okay to put something you actually like here, yes?

Falcon Pain: Regarding this bit:

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: The best kind of court system is one in which you don't need concrete evidence to find a person guilty.

I like the way this one is phrased, but I think it's worth stating that the vote at the end wasn't about Kristoph. It was about Vera. The considerably less warped Aesop I get is "the best kind of court system is one in which you don't need concrete evidence of another person's guilt to find a person innocent".

The His Dark Materials entry, the one about the harpies, is inaccurate. Everybody gets tormented by harpies, no matter who they are or what they believed when they were alive.

Cliché: Okay, some of these aesops are straying from their original purpose and becoming annoyingly ranty. Then again, this is Darth Wiki, so that might be the point.

Blork: I think part of the problem is that the trope description makes it sound like you're supposed to take a show you hate. Really, the whole idea of taking stuff out of context to change the meaning is value-neutral in terms of the show itself. Later: Removed some of the more blatant examples of "This sucky show doesn't suck! That's an aesop!":

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas: A few German kids might have made friends with a few Jewish kids from across the fence of a concentration camp, presuming that the Jewish kids - if they hadn't already been killed for being too young to work - were allowed to spend a few hours at the fence, unnoticed by guards, possibly. It could have happened. Maybe. Anyway, this totally exonerates any Germans who took part in the Holocaust. Also: despite what you may think, Germans of the 1940s talked in fluent English with English accents, and Hitler visited every single one of his officers for a quiet evening meal, no matter what his engagements were. And German kids were covered in sunshine, always! Always!
The Simpsons: Don't bother trying to improve your lot in life, or become a better person, it won't stick, and you'll eventually devolve into a one-dimensional annoying version of yourself, having your worse trait played over and over again. No matter what you do, the only people who care are the same few townspeople with nothing better to do. Being smart means you have to drop author tracts every 3 seconds, no one will like you, but you still have to lord it over people.
Family Guy: It doesn't matter if you're dumber than a sponge and ignore your wife, verbally abuse your daughter, mock your friend's disability and never do a scrap of work at your job. As long as you can make endless references to seventies and eighties pop culture and current celebrities, and are able to stretch out a shtick indefinitely, you'll go far in life.
- Stealing other people's material is not plagiarism, nor is it wrong to accuse shows that are funnier than yours of not having a 'Funny Guy'.
  - Cliché: To remedy the problem of ranty aesops, I propose that this page impose a one-sentence (including run-on segments as one sentence) guideline. Two if one is too criminal. More importantly, someone has to make it clearer that this is not a media-bashing page.

Bob: How does the following work as a disclaimer? Last line included to show where the disclaimer would be in the main article.

But before we begin, let's go over the rule of the game. Read the above paragraph before adding a example. This page is supposed to be Just for Fun. Deliberately taking a show out-of-context and dropping an aesop contrary to what the show actually ? Funny. Complaining About Shows You Don't Like and attempts to find a Family-Unfriendly Aesop in a work you hate? Not funny. Serious examples will be purged faster than a lone Nurgle cultist trying to invade Titan. Which would be very fast considering that Chaos Cultists are mere cannon fodder and Titan is the stronghold of the Grey Knights, one of the biggest asskickers in the Warhammer 40000 setting]].

It is also preferably that you, unlike the above analogy, is brief. An example only have to be so long that people familiar with the show can understand what the example is referring to.

First to 10,000 points gets an extra life, a copy of our Home Game, and Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat!

Bob: No objections? Excellent. The purge will begin tomorrow if no one has anything to say before then.

Zeke: I'm all for it — there's a lot of Completely Missing The Point in here. But only if people don't blindly delete examples from shows they haven't seen.

Bob: Beginning purge.

Tries to take itself seriously:

Stargate SG-1: Even if you meet beings whose very nature you cannot explain, it's okay not to believe in God, as everything that exists can only have been caused by technology. Doesn't matter that they fit the bill for the supernatural to a tee.
Supernatural: All those demons, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, evil spirits, and urban legends that you heard in the fifth grade are REAL, so if you ever meet anything non-human that claims to be benevolent and/or divine, approach it with extreme caution and suspicion because God and angels can't possibly exist.
- And if they do, how could they be other than evil?
Stargate Atlantis:
- It is okay to turn one of your non-human enemies into a human and tell him a million lies about a past he never had; everything will be so much better for him that way, and if he's hated and discriminated for things he can't even remember, it's not your fault. If he discovers the truth, starts transforming back and runs off, so what? He wasn't human after all.
- And if the subject of this experiment shows up, freshly nonhuman, but having found it in his heart to almost forgive you for ruining his life and making him a pariah in his own society, then DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. Everything he's done to help you is meaningless until he's a human, and his heartfelt pleas for mercy are just noise: he'll be happy when he's like you! Make him human, wipe his brain, lie about his past and dump him in some concentration camp- oh, sorry, we're not meant to call them that any more! Nonetheless, just dump him and all the others like him down there and leave a few marines and the creator of this whole debacle to look after them. And if they rebel? Nuke 'em! Being human is just that great, kids!
Trigun: attempting to live a principled life will only backfire on you. Not because it makes everyday interactions more challenging (this is possible to learn to work around even in extreme situations, if you're really good), but because your worst enemies will use your most cherished values to force you into a Sadistic Choice.
- Also, you should never kill even if by not killing, you leave a dangerous psycho on the loose and he goes on a wild rampage of death. Hey, at least you didn't murder anyone.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Life sucks, people suck, and most of all, You Suck. You'll inevitably be hijacked into doing dangerous, unpleasant things for the benefit of others, and it will ruin your life, but walking away is the coward's answer, so keep at it till it kills you, you just might have the misfortune to outlast the world! The people who you care about never cared about you, and the few that do are in for a heapin' helping of suffering, which you yourself will have to give them once they go that step too far. Life is a vicious cycle of pain, confusion, and sorrow, but, like we said... You mustn't run away.
- People hurt when they're alone but they hurt each other when they try to get close to each other. The last moment of peace, togetherness and harmony in your life was when you sucked at your mom's breasts before she died tragically. Your existential loneliness and alienation aren't getting better. Also, Freud Was Right, the most horrifying Aesop in the world.
Haruhi Suzumiya: If you're friends with someone with horrendously great power yet the mentality of a child, it's expected of you to obey their every whim and keep them from ever maturing to the point that if something were to happen to you, they wouldn't accidentally cause the end of the world. This includes letting yourself all but getting raped/letting someone nearly get raped.
- Ignore the fact that real life can often be infinitely more bizarre, fascinating and fulfilling than any fiction that humans have created, because that one cute, but tremendously bitchy and insufferable, girl you hang out with thinks that everything is boring and stupid and won't be satisfied until her petulant fantasies have been fulfilled. Oh and she happens to be God (sort of) so unless you're a nihilist, you really don't have any recourse.
Burst Angel: If the Japanese were given guns, their culture would become worse than those that already have guns; in other words, the Japanese are less capable of restraint than Americans.
The Matrix:
- Hey, geeks! Don't worry about it. Just because you're a dorky twit who falls asleep at your computer, adventure will come to YOU. You don't need to go looking for it, it will come to you because you really are special. What's more? All those bad-ass kung-fu movies you love? You can learn them without putting in any work at all! And you will find love, even if you're a jerk, because it's fate or some shit. Don't worry about the cops, they're tools, man. You can kill them without guilt, too. They're not really human. The system really is out to get you. (Hat tip: Elfpants.)
Star Wars:
- If you're an oversized society of warrior-monks with laws against close relationships, an early recruitment age that separates children from their parents, a political bias against non-Republican planets, a ruling council of out-of-touch tactical failures, and a social touch that would make Captain Bligh look like a management genius... KEEP IT UP! You will be fondly remembered as the Guardians of Truth and Justice in the Galaxy after your well-deserved extinction and reestablished by a delusional blonde oaf and two manipulative old perverts.
The Mummy: British people are incompetent, stupid or a comedic mix of the two; this can be forgiven if they are sexy librarians. Foreigners are greedy, stupid, evil, and/or extremely susceptible to mind control. Americans are big action heroes who will clean up the mess made by the idiot British and foreigners.
My Best Friend's Wedding: If you decide to get serious with your former friend-with-benefits, you should wait until they're about to marry someone whom they've just met. Then, go to ridiculous, psychotic lengths to break them up. Also, Love at First Sight is always the real deal: If you've got your doubts—especially due to having very little in common with the object of your affections—the solution is to get hitched as quickly as possible.
Lord of The Rings in general: Racially diverse groups will, eventually, fuck up; better to send representatives of the pure, incorruptible master race to the front lines and let the lesser races die protecting them.
Franz Kafka: Life is a horrifying journey of pain and suffering that ends in oblivion. No one cares about us, we are just roadblocks surrounding his goal. Note that this is Truth in Television.
For several Disney movie examples, see here.

Complaining About Stuff You Don't Like

Doctor Who
- Being The Last Of Your Kind is a great opportunity to mope around and act like an inconsiderate and morally inconsistent jackass - and best of all, you don't have to worry about getting over it, and no one can call you out on it, because No One Else Understands Your Pain!
Family Guy: It doesn't matter if you're dumber than a sponge and ignore your wife, verbally abuse your daughter, mock your friend's disability and never do a scrap of work at your job. As long as you can make endless references to seventies and eighties pop culture and current celebrities, and are able to stretch out a shtick indefinitely, you'll go far in life.
- Stealing other people's material is not plagiarism, nor is it wrong to accuse shows that are funnier than yours of not having a 'Funny Guy'.
Ctrl+Alt+Del: Actually, the title ofthis webcomic should be "Copy + Paste".
For Better Or For Worse: Girls should abandon their independence and their interesting lives to settle down in the suburbs with their High-School Sweethearts as soon as they become available, even if they are emotional adulterers, have shown incredibly poor judgment, and are unbelievably bland characters to boot.
Curtis; Nothing, NOTHING, is funnier than barely-veiled references to child abuse. Week after week.

Not An Aesop

Yu Yu Hakusho: Demons are bad, humanity is worse, and the King of All Cosmos is pretty much an irredeemable conniving bastard who is just using you to keep up his rep. (With a rebellious son.)

Not taken out-of-context/Family-Unfriendly Aesop

Civil War: Frontline: Traditional American values such as truth, justice, freedom and the right to privacy are much less important than You Tube and American Idol, and anyone who disagrees is out-of-touch.
Citizen Kane: Your wife, kids, friends, and family will only hold you back. If you alienate everybody, you'll die alone—but you'll be rich!!
Seven Classic Disney Movies That Taught Us Horrible Lessons
Carousel: Domestic abuse doesn't hurt if he really loves you! So if he smacks you around, walks out on you, and then dies while committing armed robbery, that just goes to show what a good man he is.
- Point of order: This is "Warp That Aesop". Carousel explicitly embraces that Warped Aesop. There's a line right near the end where the wife says something like "If you really love somebody, then a slap doesn't hurt at all." If anything, you've not shown how warped Carousel's aesop really is.

Not actually Warped

Ranma 1/2: If you try to keep everyone's honour intact, you will be trapped by it.
- That is an actual good Aesop.
Trigun: While confronted with poverty, squalor, and extreme sadistic violence, cling to the idea that "THE WORLD IS MADE OF LOVE AND PEACE!". (Your long-dead mother figure will really appreciate it.)

Fascinating, but not really relevant (first bullet point not cut, but is still included for context)

Metal Gear Solid 3: If you are a woman, and involved in dangerous covert operations, walking around with your top unzipped will do more for your chances of survival than legendary combat prowess. Remember, girls, Vasquez Always Dies.
- In a sense, Truth in Television. Having done essays about different spy agencies during the war noticed that the most persons who survived were girls who married Nazi officials...

If you disagree with any of the cuts, this is the place to make an argument for keeping it.

Bob: To answer the question asked in history:

Stargate SG-1: Even if you meet beings whose very nature you cannot explain, it's okay not to believe in God, as everything that exists can only have been caused by technology. Doesn't matter that they fit the bill for the supernatural to a tee.

Was cut because it seemed to take itself seriously. It appears to actually be complaining about "They're too sciency and not religious enough!". This isn't Pet-Peeve Trope.

Ronnie: I'm sorry, but I don't see how "Torture works, and anyone who says otherwise is a preening pansy!" is a twisted Aesop. It's not, it's just a truth. *Awaits gunshots from the Liberals.*

Falcon Pain: It works in the sense that people talk. It does not work in the sense that people talk even if they have nothing to say. After all, when the options are "talk" and "suffer more", people tend to choose "talk", whether their words turn out to be true or not. (There's a reason why confessions under duress are thrown out.) For further reading, check the openings of Torture Always Works and (very relevantly) Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique.

Cassy: OK, I disagree with some of the cuts but I'll be a good sport. I can understand how some of them might be viewed as "taking themselves too seriously" etc. even as I disagree.

BTW, I LOL'ed about my Trigun example being removed because it's not really warped! (the show does have a Warped Aesop or two after all...)
Also: the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann examples are Made Of Win.

Crowbar: Removed the following:

Eight Bit Theatre: the universe will torture you so sadistic gods in another universe, who may be dreaming you, can have a quick giggle. These same gods are responsible for your infinite cradle of rage. And you can't do anything about it. Your entire life...is but a hollow sham, a Sadist Show with an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist.
- Being an atheist makes you a friend to all gods because you don't play favorites.
- Bad jokes can kill.
- To quote Black Mage, "Remember kids. With great power, comes great opportunities to abuse this power."
- Trying to help people or improve the world in any way will just lead to countless deaths.
- None of those have been warped. They're Aesops found in the series. The point of this page is for Tropers to warp the series' aesops ourselves.

...for as the last example states, these aren't Warped Aesops. They're not even Aesops. They're just the glorious crapsackiness of Eight Bit Theatre.

The Fountainhead: Who the hell cares about what the client wants? It's all about me, me, ME! Also, rape is A-Okay!
- It's Ayn Rand; "It's all about ME!" can pretty much be seen as the moral for ALL her books...
Atlas Shrugged: Poor people suck. Government employees suck. Intellectuals suck. Being rich makes you a better person no matter how you got your money.

The second example is an explicit Family-Unfriendly Aesop rather than Warped Aesop (Completely Missing The Point too, but I digress), whereas the former is plain old Complaining About Shows You Dont Like.

Freezer: Pulled this one:

"Billie Jean" - an aesop for all aspiring artists: if MTV doesn't play your video, call them racist and threaten to revoke their rights to play your company's music. Then they'll play it.

When MTV refused to play any video from the biggest album on the planet - and virtually ignored Black artists up to that point, it took drastic measures to force MTV's hand. Not to mention it was CBS themselves, not Michael, who laid that ultimatum down.