Misused: Broken Aesop

Just took a look at the Broken Aesop article, and I found a lot of borderline whining about works that the contributors obviously don't like.

Item: (Now this is an example I've removed, but it perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about.) "In The Amazing Spiderman, shortly before his death, Uncle Ben teaches Peter the moral “If you can do good things for other people, you have a moral obligation to do those things." However, Peter completely fails to take this lesson on board since the only reason he fights criminals in the first place is to avenge Uncle Ben's death rather than to help people."

"He does this again later when, after finding out that Curt Connors has has been transformed into the Lizard, he tells Gwen that he is going to stop him because he gave Curt Connors the missing half of the formula and is therefore partly to blame for his transformation. This is a complete contradiction of "you should do good things because you can", rather than doing good things because you believe you are somehow responsible for them."

On The First Point: These are personal problems PETER PARKER is has, NOT the film itself. The fim even addresses that Peter/Spidey isn't learning the lesson his uncle was trying to impart.

On The Second Point: Uncle Ben's point didn't touch on the specific situation of fixing a mistake. It was a mistake to give Connors the other half of the equation, and as the result, a mutated madman is running terrorizing people and about to turn the city into Lizard Folk. Therefore, it IS Peter's responsibility to fix his screw-up. It's still about responsibility, so therefore does not contradict the basic moral.

The entire article is littered with examples like this that are just whining and blatant attempts to make good works seem bad. I motion Broken Aesop become a YMMV article if you don't deem an overhaul necessary.

edited 23rd Jul '12 4:11:40 AM by WinterWorlock

I suspect that if Broken Aesop will be moved to YMMV, it will be musused even more. Broken Aesop describe rather objective thing - an Aesop wich was explicitly set and voiced, but heroes succeed by doing the opposite. It's not really an audience reaction, though sometimes only seen through Fridge Logic. A lot of people confuse Broken Aesop with Family-Unfriendly Aesop, also with the cases when heroes do something morally ambiguous. Both variants are YMMV material, buth they're not BrokenAesops.

edited 23rd Jul '12 7:17:41 AM by kundoo

Shame on whoever thought we should name a bunch of tropes [Adjective]Aesop. Broken Aesop? Lost Aesop? Clueless Aesop? You expected people to keep these definitions straight?

Then I guess we need to start regulating that page more.

Routerie is right! Now we know we shouldn't give tropes confusing names!

edited 23rd Jul '12 12:59:53 PM by dna

Unsupported Aesop? Citation Needed Aesop? (Sorry.)

I like Undermined Aesop...

Overall, I think we might just have too many of these. The overlap is often fuzzy, and the end result is usually just Aesop That Doesnt Work.

edited 31st Jul '12 8:12:40 AM by AnotherDuck

We do seem to have too many "aesop" tropes with only nebulous differences.

Lost Aesop appears to be simply "aesop or broken aesop done badly" or "done zigzagged", neither of which should count as a separate trope.

Clueless Aesop purports to be "aesop in a show that cannot handle it" (which is just the same as "aesop done badly", really). However, several of the examples take the name literally for "any aesop that some troper finds clueless" (which is funny but not a trope).

Then, looking through the pages, I find Double Aesop (which is merely "one particular trope used twice in the same work"), Ignored Aesop (which seems to be the same as Broken Aesop), Fantastic Aesop (which is a distinct trope, or possibly two distinct tropes, but the page has trouble figuring out which ones), and Space Whale Aesop (which is also distinct, but gets abused for Fantastic Aesop, or for any ridiculous-consequence story even if no aesops are involved).

...Special Efforts time?

I think the inherent problem with all the aesop articles is not the names, or the description, but rather the fact that many works try to be a bit amgiguous about their moral and without knowing author's intent, you can't be quite sure.

I've seen Broken Aesop listed for Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you've seen it, you'll know what it's referring to, but you'll also know that Gen Urobuchi does not want to give his stories clear morals and much of the tension comes from the characters having to make very difficult choices and never knowing if it was "right".

People try to find meanings in everything, whether there is one or not. That was the problem with Unfortunate Implications.

Honestly, I think it would be possible to merge Ignored Aesop, Lost Aesop and Clueless Aesop into Broken Aesop.

We have, in no particular order:

• Aesop that's directly contradicted in the show.
• Aesop that's stated but no one actually follows.
• Aesop that just doesn't work because of various less definable reasons, such as Bad Writing.
• Zigzagged aesop.

The two firsts are just different ways of writing basically the same thing. The third isn't defined as a distinct trope. The last one is just a zigzagged aesop that doesn't work because there's not enough keeping track of what it wants and how it correlates to what the characters do.

Summa summarum, there's just not enough difference for tropers to keep them apart.

Lastly, Fantastic Aesop and Space Whale Aesop are distinct in that they're technically working aesops, but either don't have any applicability in Real Life, or have the consequences come out of nowhere.

I think that's the wrong approach. That creates a large umbrella trope that's just Aesop Done Badly. Granted, every one of the current names sounds like "aesop done badly," and that's the problem.

Clueless Aesop is Unqualified To Deliver The Aesop or Out Of Their League Aesop. A genuine aesop that the show can't handle because it's a kids show there's not enough time to do it justice.

Ignored Aesop is a comedy trope, a subtrope of Hypocritical Humor. A character states a (serious) aesop and then immediately breaks it, Played for Laughs. We should easity distinguish these from all the other aesop tropes.

Lost Aesop: the absence of a single aesop, or the presence of multiple contradictory ones. Tropes Are Not Bad.

Broken Aesop is, as this thread put it, Undermined Aesop. The show offers an explicit moral which the overall story does not support. This is the most problematic of the tropes, open to complaining, natter, author assumptions and overanalysis.

Good thoughts.

So, with that definition, we have essentially:

• Undermined Aesop: Broken Aesop, which is when the show undermines the aesop it tries to teach.
• Hypocritical Humor Aesop: Ignored Aesop, which is what the tin says. It doesn't suffer from misuse as far as I can tell, but to make its name more distinct from the others might help with the confusion about the sheer amount of similar tropes.
• Unqualified Aesop: Clueless Aesop, which is when the writers for one reason or another just can't handle the issue. It's not undermined, just fails.
• Zigzagged Aesop: Lost Aesop, which is an aesop that's lost when the plot zigzags too much, and it ends up being too confusing or contrary to itself to work. I still think it's essentially Undermined And Or Unqualified Aesop But Zigzagged.

edited 31st Jul '12 10:17:51 AM by AnotherDuck

Regarding unqualified and/or clueless aesops: who, exactly, determines whether an aesop "fails" or not? Is this supposed to be YMMV?

"Aesop doesn't work for the audience" is YMMV. Aesop is contradicted in-story isn't.

As I understand it, the Clueless Aesop is not just about failing an Aesop. It's when the story cannot say outright why exactly something is right or wrong without resorting to (rather bizarre)euphemisms. Like trying to teach that killing is bad in a work that Never Says Die, thus leaving the audience wondering why "defeating" someone was such a bad thing.

That's perhaps what it's supposed to be, but it's not what it's used for on its own page.

Is that what it is? Hm. I thought it included examples like Kids Incorporated or Glee talking about domestic violence for ten minutes before cutting to an irrelevant song and dance number.

Obligatory Internet Archive links:

• Clueless Aesop (YKTTW)
• Lost Aesop (YKTTW)
• Broken Aesop: 2005, 2007 (this is from when we still had the original Warped Aesop page)

The Archive had no versions of Ignored Aesop.

I'd say, that's Very Special Episode.

A Very Special Episode devotes its whole running time to a serious issue. What happens when a show devotes some time to a serious issue but does so superficially before moving on?

It sounds like the Glee/Kids Incorporated example is just Very Special Episode done badly.

You might say every failed aesop is a Very Special Episode done badly, but I'm talking about something more specific.

To go into details: reviewers savaged a couple of recent Glee episodes that covered teen suicide and domestic violence. Was it because they were narmy, or anvilicious, or contradicted the message? No - the actual scenes that offered the aesops received praise. The reviewers just objected to the show cutting from those plots to happy singing or fluffy teen romance, undermining their importance by giving their little time.

Maybe YKTTW should produce a new trope, Five Second Aesop or something. It appears that Clueless Aesop was envisioned as nothing more than Aesop Done Badly (Inept Aesop is still a redirect!) so we could just cut it.

Would that be related to Aesop Amnesia?

Okay, "Five Second Aesop" is a bad name then. I meant an aesop that is given minimal time. One that the show quickly moves on from, not one that it or a character contradicts.

I'm interested in fixing these, but I should note that I consider An Aesop to be a sign of bad writing in general.