[both girls go into a Stunned Silence, then start to cry]
Nozomi: Moroboshi-sensei!
Moroboshi: What? I'm spitting facts!
Everyone knows the Stock Aesops: Be Yourself; be honest; appreciate what you have; money can't buy happiness; follow your dreams. Sometimes these morals contradict each other, but nobody is surprised to see any of them in a story. However, sometimes the lesson isn't common wisdom or an easy slogan: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished", "Growing Up Sucks", "Big moves get results so Be a Whore to Get Your Man", "It's not always better to be honest when the truth is devastating", or "Sometimes Violence Really Is the Answer". These are tough lessons: they're uncomfortable, easy to misinterpret, and might not apply in every situation. Yet more often than not, they are things people — even kids — need to know in order to get by in the world.
This kind of moral is, at the least, subjective. Sometimes an author thinks they're delivering a hard truth, but the audience sees it as common knowledge, or vice versa. Since one person's hard truth is another's dangerous falsehood, examples belong on this page regardless of whether their Aesops are objectively true, and regardless of how much the audience is convinced that they are. The important thing is that the Aesop is a bitter pill; something parents probably wouldn't want their kids to know, even if it is true. These morals may try to Take a Third Option: know the uncomfortable truth so you'll be ready if and when it does happen.
Note that a Hard Truth Aesop doesn't have to be pessimistic, just surprising and unconventional. For example, "Peer pressure is good for you because it convinces you to try new things" (or conversely, "Rejecting the wisdom of the crowd could end badly")." Presentation can also turn a stock Aesop into a hard truth: for instance, "Keep it Safe, Sane, and Consensual" almost always gets a friendlier reception from Moral Guardians than "You Need to Get Laid," though the underlying message of both is Sex Is Good.
Due to Values Dissonance, a moral that was once a hard truth may now either be seen as too obvious to need stating, especially morals about social mores and civil rights (see Fair for Its Day), or alternatively as long-outdated and better off ignored, especially lessons regarding child-rearing (which often comes off as promoting child abuse to a modern audience). This list is for morals that can be hard to stomach even in their native context. Beware falling anvils.
Contrast Don't Shoot the Message, where even those who agree with the Aesop hate its presentation.
See also Unfortunate Implications and The Complainer Is Always Wrong.
Note: Not every work has an Aesop. There is a difference between 'depiction' and 'endorsement': a character behaving in a certain way does not necessarily mean the work promotes said behavior (for the character or the audience). If you are drawing an absurd moral from a story which doesn't attempt to teach one, take it to Warp That Aesop on Darth Wiki.
Works with their own pages:
- Anime & Manga
- Fan Works
- Film — Animation
- Film — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Western Animation
Examples
- The moral of Birds of Prey: The Battle Within, the arc from issues 76 to 85, appears to be the fairly stock Aesop of "You should accept your friends for who they are and not try to change them", except that what Barbara Gordon was trying to change about Huntress was her tendency to kill people. In the end, Barbara apologizes to Huntress, and, in the Dead of Winter story arc (issues 104-108), actually tells Huntress to use deadly force against the Secret Six if she thinks it appropriate, making the moral that sometimes killing people is a good idea.
- One of the Mass Effect: Foundation comics had Kaidan's father offer the advice that even the right decision has terrible consequences.
- The Mega Man (Archie Comics) comic comes after half of Dr. Wily's robots from the second and third line decide they'd rather be shut down than be reprogrammed. Rock and Roll are deeply saddened by seeing them commit the robot version of suicide, with Dr. Light sadly telling them that you can't save everybody and not everyone wants to be saved.
- The Vision (2015): "Not everyone can or should be shoehorned into middle-class suburban life".
- Cat Kid Comic Club: In 'Influencers', Flippy points out to the baby frogs that even though everyone promised to help, no one is actually doing anything.
- Calvin and Hobbes:
- In one strip, Calvin is debating whether he should spend his time playing outside, or focus on his schoolwork. He decides that playing will make him happier in the short term, studying will make him happier in the long term, but going to play outside would also make better memories. Not every day you see a comic tell kids to not care too much about their homework.
- In one strip, Calvin tells his teacher Ms. Wormwood that he wants a guarantee that his schooling is going to ensure that he's rich and successful when he grows up. Ms. Wormwood bluntly tells him that if he wants a good education, he has to work harder: "What you get out of school depends on what you put into it." Education isn't automatically a ticket to success, and requires active participation as opposed to passive learning—again, that's not something you see in a lot of comic strips.
- One of the strip's most common Aesops deals with Calvin's parents—namely, that parenting is often a tedious, thankless, and downright horrible job, especially when you're dealing with a kid who's a mix between a Child Prodigy and a Spoiled Brat. While Calvin's mom and dad do genuinely love him, they're also extremely and justifably frustrated with his destructive behavior, refusal to do schoolwork or chores (out of laziness rather than inability), and generally nasty demeanor. Bill Watterson himself commented that he wanted to depict the reality of parenting as opposed to the sanitized version popular in comic strips, and often, that reality isn't pretty.
- Building on the above: the arc where Calvin and his parents come home from time away to discover that someone broke into their house is A Day in the Limelight for his mother and father, who spend several strips discussing how they're feeling. One Aesop in particular comes from Calvin's dad, who remarks that when he was a child, he always assumed that his parents could solve any problem without trying... but now that he's a grown-up himself, he's realized that "the whole thing is ad-libbed." Parents and authority figures don't automatically know how to solve every problem, and being an adult doesn't mean you have everything figured out: often, people are just doing their best to get through every day without an instruction manual.
- A hard-hitting storyline has Moe force Calvin to hand over his toy truck. After contemplating what would be doing the right thing, he tries (a second time) to make it clear to Moe that taking his toy truck is wrong only to ultimately give up when Moe dares him to a fight. This shows that bullies cannot be reasoned with and they can even get away with their misdeeds simply because they're bigger and more powerful. Plus, as Calvin and Hobbes discuss in the end, the world's not always a fair place and some people just don't care about ideas of right and wrong.
- Pearls Before Swine: Parodied with Rat's children's stories.
Goat: You are not putting this in a children's book.
Rat: "So remember, kids, luck and timing are more important than personal effort."
- Upin & Ipin: Seronoknya Membaca/Reading Is Fun: You must accept a fictional narrative's Canon, even if it doesn't turn out how you'd like it to, and keep your Fix Fics to yourself.
- Russian fairy tales tend to be rather cynical. One story in a collection by 19th-century folklorist Alexander Afanasyev has the moral "Old favors are soon forgotten."
- Russian fairy tale "Morozko" has "you should not go out of your way to be rude, confrontational and arrogant to powerful people who can destroy you easily and with no consequence because it will not end well for you".
- Cinderella. Charles Perrault announced at the end that the moral was: Good looks and all sorts of other wonderful traits are useless without connections.
- The standard fairy tale plot of a hero overcoming impossible quests to marry a princess gets subverted in Friedrich Schiller's ballad "The Diver". A King throws a golden cup into some rough water and declares that whoever can retrieve it can keep it. After the hero manages this, the king ups the ante by throwing a ring into the water and telling the hero that he will get the princess if he can do it again. The hero tries and drowns. The new moral here is "she is probably not worth it" or "quit while you are ahead".
- Friedrich Schiller subverts the "Idiotic challenges will win you the heart of a woman" plot in "The Glove" in which a lady throws her glove into an arena full of lions and tigers and challenges (mockingly) her suitor to get it. He retrieves the glove, the lady immediately falls for him — and he throws the glove in her face, saying "Den Dank, Dame, begeher ich nicht" ("Such gratitude, madame, is not desired by me") — the Aesop is "Women, don't mock your suitor if you want to keep him" or "Men, sometimes a woman is more trouble than she's worth".
- "The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind": If you are forced to pick sides, always choose the one who will be more advantageous for you.
- Puss in Boots (a.k.a. "The Master Cat") has "if you would be successful in life, learn how to evade your predators, how to catch your prey, and how to curry favor with the powerful."
- "The Scorpion And The Frog":
- Taken by itself with no metaphor, the lesson is that a predatory animal (the scorpion) with enough sapience to communicate with a creature it naturally preys on (the frog) shouldn't attempt to fight its instincts and pursue cooperative ventures. Evolution molded the scorpion to kill prey and trying to be something other than that to the frog will only result in one's predatory instincts rising to the surface at the worst possible time, dooming both to a watery grave. It is better to stick with the natural order of things than to try to evolve past one's Darwinian trappings.
- As a metaphor for evil, it suggests evil is an overriding character trait that outweighs self-interest and survival and one should not trust in an evil person trying to pull a Heel–Face Turn.
- It's also saying that some people are just plain rotten, and shouldn't be trusted, because of who and what they are.
- The moral is "Talk does not change the nature of things", i.e., you can discuss something, debate it, argue about it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, and agree on it. None of that will change its nature.
- A more down-to-earth moral is that you should not trust wild animals because they can not be reasoned with, and they can and will attack you when you get too close to them.
- Another way to interpret the lesson is that you can't keep sugarcoating your problems and you can do great harm to yourself by trying to "fix" evil.
- One story involves a cat and a mouse living together and deciding to store a pot of cream for winter. They hide it in a church until they need it. Over some time, however, the cat is gradually tempted three times into drinking the cream, until it's all gone. When the mouse finds out, she starts yelling at the cat for eating their food supply for the winter. The cat responds by eating the mouse, and the story concludes with the lesson that, well, that's just how the world works (that cats and mice just can't co-exist). It also can be a "Just So" Story, i.e. "…and that's why cats and mice are such bitter enemies to this day." From this, we can also draw the rather jarring conclusion that some acts are truly unforgivable, such that the conflicts arising from them can never be peaceably settled.
- One story involves two brothers, one rich and one poor. Subverting the usual setup, the rich brother is quite willing to help out the poor brother, who cannot seem to hold on to money for any length of time. One day the rich brother waits in the bushes by the roadside until he sees his brother, then throws a purse onto the road. The poor brother just keeps walking, and when questioned says he was walking with his eyes closed to see how blind people manage it. The Aesop is that there's just no helping some people.
- A folk tale goes like this: In the winter, a peasant sees a little bird stiff with cold and plunks it into a fresh cowpat to warm it up. The warm bird starts chirping, attracting a fox, who pulls it out of the cowpat, dunks it in a pool of water, and eats it. The moral is threefold: Those who drop you in the shit don't necessarily mean harm, those who pull you out of shit don't necessarily have your best interests at heart, and when you're in the shit, don't go chirping about it so everyone knows.
- "Black Tie White Noise" by David Bowie has one, the result of it being written in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles: Racial harmony is possible but don't imagine it's going to be easy to achieve, or that there won't be violence along the way ("There'll be some blood, no doubt about it"). Not a comfortable Aesop, but if history's taught us anything…
- The music video for Drake's Find Your Love.
The song is a positive message about putting everything on the line for love which Drake does in the video to a woman… who's also connected to a gang leader. He crosses the line and attempts to woo her… and he's eventually caught by the gang, beaten and (presumably) shot in the back of the head by the same girl he was putting his heart on the line for. The video ends in a Bolivian Army Ending (the girl could have shot the gang leader) but there is a clear message about how not even love is worth crossing a line over.
- Eminem has many songs about how, while violent and/or explicit music may be a bad influence on the youth, it also serves as an important outlet for their more complicated emotions. A good example is "Sing For The Moment", in which the character at the beginning of the story is an angry young white child from a broken home who became "brainwashed from rock and rap" and punched his abusive stepfather in the face. It's clear he isn't exactly looking to Eminem's music for its clever lyrics or satire of white-trash life, but the defiant fantasy it inspires him to live up to — even if never intended — is a form of liberation he needs.
- Harry Chapin's song Mr. Tanner is about a man who runs a dry cleaner and loves to sing, and is an amateur performer in his spare time. His friends convince him to try to become a professional singer, so he throws all his money into a concert performance that… bombs. Critics are terse and dismissive with him, suggesting he'd be better off keeping his day job. Mr. Tanner returns to his home and his job and stops performing publicly. The moral here is "Sometimes chasing your dream fails". If you want to be more blunt, you could phrase it "Loving to do something doesn't make you good at it."
- Indica's song "In Passing" is about a dead singer telling her sister that her pain will go away and everything passes. Not quite unfriendly until the last few lines where she tells her sister that she also will pass. Extremely true and not something most children are equipped with or taught.
- The Kenny Rogers song Coward of the County. The song's message implies that, for some things, the only course of action is violence, and being a pacifist will only get the ones you love murdered or hurt. The song also implies that filial piety is futile, and you cannot obey your parents' wishes all the time.
- Kocchi no Kento's "Hai, Yorokonde" has quite a relevant moral: it's perfectly fine to be nice and look out for people's wellbeing, but if it's constantly at your own expense, then you need to take a break and remember to put your needs first. Trying to play the "therapist friend" for everyone all the time - especially in already emotionally-taxing places like school or the workplace - is just going to tire you out and leave you with no time to sort out your own baggage.
- O.C. Smith's song "The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp" has a message that being a prostitute doesn't make a woman evil or contemptible.
- Frank Turner:
- "One Foot Before the Other": One day, you, me, and every person alive? We are all going to die. And the only afterlife any of us will ever have is to be remembered by other people and for the molecules of our bodies to rejoin the world. Which leads us to...
- "Glory Hallelujah": Religion is slavery and oppression, which people only believe in because they're scared of dying. It takes courage to face the truth: we must do what we can to help each other out in this life, not because of any reward or punishment by any god, but because it is the right thing to do and we have to make the most of the only life we will ever get. On the positive side, we don't have to feel bad or guilty about living in a way that gives us joy.
- The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" is the namer for a trope of this nature which translates to "revolution is futile because the person in charge is always going to make it tough for everyone else". Occasionally, Pete Townshend has put a more positive twist on this as "Don't listen to the boss in the first place. Think for yourself."
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Skipper Dan" has one: just because you are talented at and passionate about something, that doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to make a career out of it (especially in a highly competitive field like acting/entertainment).
- Will Wood's "Memento Mori". The song is intentionally insensitive and comedic, with most of it singing that "one day you're going to die!" and that no matter what horrible way you die, nobody will remember you and your existence means nothing. However, there's a few lines ("but you'll be at peace before you sleep if you just keep this in mind: that everything and everyone goes with the passage of time!") that mention that accepting your death is actually a good thing since then you can focus on making the most out of your life while you have it.
- The incident in The Bible where King Saul loses God's favor and dooms his dynasty to lose their rulership (1 Samuel 15) delivers this message: Yes, destroying an entire group (tribe or even nation) of people may be justified at times... but that doesn't excuse using said justification to engage in personal gain or satisfaction.
Saul was commanded by God (through His prophet Samuel) to destroy the Kingdom of Amalek as judgement for their raid on the Israelites shortly after the Exodus, killing and destroying ALL of their men, women, children, and even their livestock and other possessions. Unfortunately, Saul and his army instead decided in the ensuing destruction to take their king Agag as a prisoner (with no indication they intended to redeem him like with Rahab or Ruth), and take the fat sheep and cattle from the plunder (while Saul claims they would be sacrificed to God, Saul likely was only going to sacrifice the visceral fat for a fellowship offering [detailed in Leviticus] while feasting on the leftover meat). Because Saul engaged in Greed and unnecessary cruelty in delivering justice, God curses him and passes His blessing to the future King David instead.
- Avenue Q is a parody of Sesame Street aimed at adults, which means teaching life lessons that aren't always simple and sweet. "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" brutally subverts the Prejudice Aesop and teaches the audience that everybody holds some prejudice, even if they're marginalized themselves (i.e. Gary Coleman enjoying jokes about Polish people despite getting offended about black jokes), while insisting we shouldn't take it too personally (and that some stereotypes may even be based in truth). The final song, "For Now," also takes an Anti-Nihilist approach to life, admitting that you may never find your purpose in life, but that'll be okay, because everything in life (happy and sad) is temporary.
- A Chorus Line: Every dancer has a story... but a story isn't enough to get you success on Broadway. Zach still has to cut half the cast as he only needs eight dancers. Even if you do make it into a show, it's not steady work, especially when Broadway itself is inconsistently profitable. Chances are you'll never break out of a faceless ensemble cast to be a big star, and trying to draw attention to yourself may only work against you. Your career is only as viable as your body, so once you hit a certain age or suffer a Career-Ending Injury like Paul, you'll need to find a new source of income. "What I Did For Love" and its preceding scene have all the dancers acknowledge these harsh realities and embrace that they love the craft so much, they'll do it as long as they can, risk and all.
- Death of a Salesman says that "it's okay to stop pursuing a dream if your talents and passions lie elsewhere." In addition to their obsession with popularity, Willy and Biff do not realize the amount of effort needed to achieve their dreams. To illustrate, Charlie's son Bernard works hard to become a successful lawyer and Uncle Ben goes into the jungle for four years to find diamonds and come out rich. On the other hand, Willy and Biff are always looking for an easy way out and hate what they do, and that's why they ultimately fail in life.
- The musical Carousel and the play Liliom on which it is based contains one of these, personified in the immortal line: "It's possible for a man to hit you, hit you real hard, and have it feel like a kiss." Amanda Palmer did a cover of the song "What's the Use of Wondrin" as a creepy domestic abuse ballad… and didn't have to change a word.
- EPIC: The Musical states that in a harsh world, one has to be ruthless in order to survive. Odysseus starts out attempting to be merciful when he deals with Polyphemus in "The Cyclops Saga" by first trying to pay the cyclops back for killing one of Polyphemus' sheep and, when Polyphemus decides on violence anyway, opting to leave him blind instead of killing him, which bites him hard when the Cyclops's father Poseidon comes after him. While occasionally a merciful approach works (such as in "The Circe Saga"), it is the ruthless approach that gets Odysseus home and reunited with his family- although not without turning him into a monster as a result.
- Into the Woods, as a Deconstruction of fairy tales in general, features quite a few.
- As "No One is Alone" states, "Fathers, mothers--people make mistakes." Parents aren't automatically paragons of virtue who know what to do—they're just as human and fallible as the rest of us, and the odds are that they're going to screw up in some way. Every single parent in the show—from Cinderella's neglectful father to the overly controlling Witch to Jack's outspoken mother to Little Red Riding Hood's overly violent Granny—ends up damaging their children or the people around them in some way, which is the risk you have to accept when you have a child.
- "Witches can be right. Giants can be good"—or, in other words, life operates on Gray-and-Gray Morality. The heroic characters from the fairy tales—Cinderella, Jack, Little Red Riding Hood, the Princes, and the Baker and his Wife—end up lying, cheating, stealing, and eventually outright murdering people, while the traditional villains—the Witch, the Giant, and the Giantess—are shown as justified and morally correct in some circumstances. The Giantess in particular showed nothing but kindness to Jack, and he still stole from her and murdered her husband, driving her to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Little Red and Jack are forced to accept that a fairy tale conception of "good guys and bad guys" is inherently false, and that even the best people have to do morally questionable things to survive.
- Little Red sums up one of the major themes of the show in "I Know Things Now": "Nice is different than good." The heroes try to be nice to one another at all times, but that doesn't make them good people—in fact, the things they do are often worse than the villains' actions because they think that being nice absolves them from responsibility. Conversely, the Witch is decidedly not nice, but she's also the Only Sane Woman in several situations and acts on a Cruel to Be Kind philosophy. Being nice and polite is a fine thing, but there's a big difference between having good manners and being a good person.
- Matilda has quite a few:
- The show summarizes its main Aesop through its Arc Words: "Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty." It's shown throughout the play that being passive and hoping things will get better isn't enough. If you really want to change an unjust situation and "put it right," and have the power to do so, you're going to have to break the rules to do it. Matilda's own miserable situation only improves when she actively takes a role in fixing it by defying her parents and Miss Trunchbull, even though she knows she could get in serious trouble for it—you have to make sacrifices and run the risk of punishment if you truly want to fight injustice and make a difference.
- Much like the book it's based on, the musical outright states that authority figures—be they parents, bosses, or teachers—aren't always morally correct just because they are older or have a position of power, and sometimes the best thing you can do is disobey people you know are wrong.
- Miss Honey, Matilda's kindly and loving teacher, offers a surprising variation on Adults Are Useless. Despite being a Friend to All Children and sincerely wanting to help Matilda, Miss Honey suffers from massive trauma over the untimely death of her father and being horrifically abused by Miss Trunchbull, her cruel aunt. She ultimately can't muster up the courage or strength to take action because of her personal demons, and it's left to Matilda to save the day and defeat Miss Trunchbull. The painful lesson is that even good and genuinely well-meaning adults might not be able to help you out of a tough spot, and waiting for them to bail you out—especially when they're struggling with their own issues—is a bad idea.
- RENT:
- Using real people in your art is not cool if they don't give you their consent to be in it in the first place or you're exploiting their pain. Mark gets reamed out by a homeless woman after he uses his camera to stop a cop from harassing her because she knows that he only did it to make a name for himself and to minimize his self-guilt for being lucky enough to not be in her situation. She rightfully points out filming her like an animal on the Discovery Channel doesn't solve any of her problems, and then asks Mark if he has any extra money he can give her since that would actually help her (which he doesn't). Afterward, Mark decides to only make his documentary about his HIV-positive friends as a living memory of them but nearly gives up on realizing they aren't art, and they are going to die due to circumstances beyond their control.
- People are going to change, whether you like it or not, and you may lose your friendships with them in the process. Benny "changes" after he marries Allison and demands rent from his friends, knowing very well he can't pay. After Angel dies, the original group breaks up while calling each other out for their flaws and ignoring Mark and Benny's pleas to stop.
- Urinetown: Sometimes, there's a very good reason why a law that seems oppressive exists. In the show's case, people have to pay to use toilets because of a catastrophic draught that has reduced the water supply. When the rebels succeed in overthrowing the government and make restrooms free for everyone, what little water they had is quickly used up, and everyone dies of dehydration in a Downer Ending. Yes, the law may have been reducing the amount of water each person could use, but it was there for a very good reason.
- Wicked: The message of "Popular", Glinda's "I Am" Song, is that being liked by others will get you farther than merely being a good person. You may think this is only to show what a shallow and pretentious character Glinda is. Except she's ultimately proven right. Elphaba's actions, no matter how heroic and selfless, all fail to change anything as Madame Morrible launches a smear campaign against her and makes everyone too afraid of her to listen to the problems she's trying to fix. In the end it's Glinda who gets the power to dispose of the villains and change Oz for the better, but does she do it by speaking out against their crimes or trying to help their victims? No, she does it by sucking up to them and endearing herself to the dim-witted people of Oz until she has enough power and influence of her own to launch a non-violent coup d'état.
- In The Wild Duck, the entire cast turns out to be one giant Dysfunction Junction that is only keeping itself together by repressing every one of their hidden sins and weaknesses through willful delusion. When the resident Wide-Eyed Idealist attempts to unravel some of these lies and bring about truth, the result is the suicide of the family's young daughter. Doctor Relling, the man who attempted to keep all this under wraps, muses that you can "deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness." The truth may be nice to have when you've got it, but not every little white lie or character flaw must needs be brought to light if it's going to destroy people for no payoff.
- Ace Attorney: The pursuit of the truth is an important thing for those who defend the law, but that doesn't mean the truth won't hurt when it comes to light. Quite often, the various cases of the series involve people committing murder, robbery, theft, assault, and abuse for little reason other than personal slights or hurt feelings. It's only when the truth comes out that people can finally begin to heal, move past their traumas, and grow. But quite a few cases, even if the guilty party goes to jail, still end with long-simmering tensions having boiled to the surface which everyone involved in the case will now have to work through. This can include families with long-buried issues, lies that were made with the best of intentions, and even forcing past Trauma Buttons to remain pressed in pursuit of the truth. It's always important, but it's rarely easy.
- Cinders has quite a few:
- It's often more important to be intelligent that it is to be kind. While you should always try to be kind, in many positions the only person who can make an actual difference is someone who knows what they are doing, regardless of morals.
- On the flip side, being both immoral and unintelligent is a recipe for disaster. Should Cinders become the Evil Queen, her being Stupid Evil drives the kingdom to ruin and it's all but stated that she dies in the violent uprising that her actions cause. Contrast that to the Good Queen, who while being an ineffectual leader is at least remembered fondly for her immense kindness.
- Just because you have a legitimate grievance against someone doesn't automatically make them the bad guy and you the good guy. As Madame Ghede points out, while Cinders has every right to hate Carmosa and her stepsisters for how they've treated her, she needs to remember that they are people with reasons for the way they act.
- Sometimes you are going to have to grit your teeth and work with people you hate. The only way that Cinders can gain control of her father's house without stooping to doing unethical things is to reconciling with her stepsisters and impressing Carmosa, as the house is ultimately legally Carmosa's.
- Doki Doki Literature Club! has several:
- "Love and friendship, while important, aren't replacements for therapy." This is exemplified by Sayori, who suffers from severe depression and has managed to keep it secret from the Main Character, her childhood friend, the entire time they've known each other and has never gone to therapy. When he learns this, he can either give her a Love Confession or a Platonic Declaration of Love, which she appreciates… and then wonders why it isn't making her happy. It doesn't help that Sayori, while she has feelings for him, also struggles with extreme self-loathing and feels like a burden on others, something that the Main Character genuinely wants to understand but doesn't know how to help with. Because of this and Monika's manipulations, regardless of the outcome Sayori ultimately hangs herself.
- "Don't assume that your friends are incapable of hurting you, especially if they're envious and if they have power". Monika literally manipulates the game reality they live in to make Sayori, Natsuki and Yuri more unstable. You have to be careful not to be gaslit if you're in the way of a person and what they really want.
- Fate/stay night has a few of these:
- General: There's no such thing as a perfect, flawless hero. They just don't exist. If someone is a Living Legend or The Ace, odds are they had to sacrifice an awful lot in order to become that person. The story also pulls no punches in showing that just because someone was seen as a hero in their time doesn't mean they will be now, with Gilgamesh being portrayed just as cruel, callous, selfish and childish as he would be viewed as in real life.
- Unlimited Blade Works: Dedicating your life to the benefit of others, and helping people out a sense of obligation rather than desire, makes you little more than a machine who feeds off the happiness of other people. However it may sound, life does require a degree of selfishness every now and then. If you want to help others, you should do it because it makes you happy, not because it makes others happy.
- Heaven's Feel: Sometimes, to protect what's most important to you, you have to abandon what you once believed in (or at least, what you thought you believed in).
- Save the Date (Paper Dino): Sometimes, Failure Is the Only Option. If Felicia goes on a date with you, she dies no matter what. The only ending in which she lives, barring hacking the game, is the one where you two never go on the date.
- The Song of Saya: Pursuing your love and disregarding what society says isn't always a good thing. Even if a romantic relationship is mutually and deeply loving, if it is also toxic and makes worse people of both partners while harming everyone around them, then the best thing to do for everyone involved is to break it off, for your partner's sake as well as your own, no matter how much it hurts. Fuminori and Saya are each other's light in a dark world, and will do anything to make each other happy, but Saya is a man-eating Eldritch Abomination who, as far as Fuminori knows, is an underage child. Fuminori explicitly disregards society's standards that condemn their relationship, but said relationship leads them to do things like kill innocent people and potentially dooms humanity. The "happiest" ending, in so far as it is the ending where most characters live, is the one where Saya leaves Fuminori for his own sake.
- Umineko: When They Cry, especially in Episode 8, has, among its many themes:
- There are times when remaining ignorant, or believing a good-feeling falsehood, is the better option to knowing an Awful Truth, especially if knowing that truth would just hurt your mental health. Ange is determined to know the truth about the Rokkenjima Massacre because she believes it will at least bring some level of peace to her troubled life. It doesn't. When she actually reads the Book of the One Truth it leaves her parents being responsible for the Rokkenjima Massacre as the only truth of the case, which causes Ange's sanity to take a downward spiral and causes her to attempt a metaphorical suicide. It's only by avoiding the Book of the One Truth, Eva's diary that shows the truth of what happened that day, and letting it never be read that Ange is able to move on with her life.
- True Crime media and speculating about real-life unsolved crime cases is inherently disrespectful to the dead and actively harmful for any person actively living.
- Abusive Parents aren't necessarily abusive because they don't love their children - rather, it can be a combination of The Chain of Harm, societal expectations and/or untreated mental illnesses. This doesn't make the abuse okay, but it does help explain what seem like contradictions. This is seen most prominently with Rosa and her daughter Maria: Rosa is emotionally and physically abusive against the autistic-coded Maria, especially when she acts 'out of the norm'. She herself was abused both physically and emotionally by her father and older siblings, she's a single mother to a neurodivergent girl in Japan set in the Eighties - when both things were extremely 'abnormal' and negatively judged things to be - and her rapid mood swings are themselves evidence of undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder - despite this, she will fight tooth and nail to protect Maria in any dangerous situation, even if it leads to her death. This isn't to say that Rosa is secretly a good mother, but rather she had the potential to be a good mother if the situation was different.
- Zero Escape: Junpei's subplot in Zero Time Dilemma basically goes 'Trusting people might fatally backfire on you, but trusting nobody will definitely kill you'. Even when the group he's in starts to actually work together, they do so not out of trust (or even mutual respect) but because they'll die if they don't and nobody has the time to think up a better plan.
- Red vs. Blue: After all of the shenanigans of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Church takes a moment to reflect on how he's learned that it's wrong to hate people based on arbitrary political or military delineations. Instead, you should strive to "despise people on a personal level." Obviously, it's not necessarily a great moral, but it still rings true to an extent in that one should not mindlessly hate just because they were told to and that decision should be made after getting to know a person well enough to judge them by your own standards.
Church: You should hate someone because they're an asshole, or a pervert, or snob, or they're lazy, or arrogant or an idiot or a know-it-all. Those are reasons to dislike somebody. You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise people on a personal level. Not because they're Red, or because they're Blue, but because you know them, and you see them every single day, and you can't stand them because they're a complete and total fucking douchebag.
- RWBY: The series has quite a few of these, especially in the later Volumes when the complex narrative is made clearer:
- The series makes it consistently clear that authority figures are not perfect, and that not everything they say and do is true, or necessarily to the younger generation's benefit. Every major authority figure, from Ozpin to James Ironwood, is shown overtime to be deeply flawed people who constantly keep on making terrible decisions based on faulty assumptions or outright falsehoods, and Team RWBY and JNPR find themselves being dragged into the mess of a Secret War the adults are part of, having to shoulder their mistakes and responsibilities despite being severely underprepared for it. This causes no shortage of problems, since the adults' web of deception poses a very real danger to the younger generation's ability to fight against Salem. Additionally, the flawed parenting of some of these adults have left deep trauma in their children, resulting in those children having to resolve their own problems in addition to the above.
- Being on the "right side" of a cause does not inherently make you a good or just person, or immune to falling into selfish or destructive behavior that could end up harming your own cause far more than your enemies. Adam Taurus, Ozpin and Ironwood end up being very notable cases of this. The first portrayed himself as a freedom fighter for the rights of Faunus, Ozpin portrays himself as the leader of a secret society dedicated to opposing the leader of the Grimm, and Ironwood the second is initially portrayed as a respected general while also being a part of said secret society. The series consistently shows however that this does not make their actions inherently correct or justifiable, with themselves often being as much of an obstacle to their own goals as the enemies they face:
- Adam at one point in his life was genuinely someone who did want to fight for the rights of Faunus, but Adam allowed himself to become consumed by his own bloodlust and started destroying his own faction out of ego and inability to let go of his entitlement in regards to his ex, Blake Belladonna. All the while his extremist behavior alienated less militant and more cautious Faunus in the process until the White Fang was nearly reduced to a cult hellbent on subjugating their enemies no differently than the humans, and also endangering the people he claimed to stand for due to the very real risk of his actions backfiring and painting all Faunus as being terroristic monsters. To make matters worse, the White Fang prior to him being leader was certainly at risk of becoming like this under Sienna Khan, but she was far more practical and understood the geopolitical complexities of their situation and recognized how dangerous his rhetoric was becoming... only for him to kill her.
- Ozpin's actions are revealed through sidestories and his backstory to have also played a large part in the many injustices in society, being so fixated on fighting to achieve his god-given mission that he ignored and papered over many of the societal issues in the Kingdoms, while also being too myopic to realize how self-destructive this is and implied to be repeating this course of actions for centuries. In addition, his extreme secrecy, constant tendency to only tell half-truths or leave out vital information that puts other people's lives at risk has alienated many of his potential allies, or unintentionally been the catalyst for them turning on him.
- Ironwood is the most egregious case, with his reign over Atlas being intensely authoritarian, and said society being a police state that subjugates and oppresses its own people, enabling villains to easily exploit it and turn the citizens against him. While he tries to portray himself as a benevolent but tough leader, his care is shown very quickly to be extremely conditional and easily revoked, as well as being a massive hypocrite. Combined with his own inability to self-reflect and stubborn paranoia, and he causes just as many problems as the villains, to the point that when he finally faces off against Salem, he runs away and tries abandoning Remnant to the Grimm solely to avoid facing his own fear and the consequences of his incompetence and irrationality. All the while insisting that everyone else failed to be grateful to him for his sacrifices and lack of respect.
- Likewise, this applies to Ruby herself. Her Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers! attitude causes her to come into conflict with Ironwood when they couldn't come to a compromise on dealing with Salem's invasion, resulting in most of their troubles in Volume 8 stemming from their conflict, not helped with splitting up the group to deal with multiple conflicts, which in turn led to her having to invoke a ColonyDrop onto Mantle to save Penny... only for her to die anyways. Even after facing the consequences for her decisions, Ruby pushes herself forward and makes more mistakes in the process which severely damage her mental state but the rest of the team use her Wide-Eyed Idealist nature to continuously dismiss her obvious trauma as something she'll easily get over because it's precisely how she always presents herself to her teammates. When Ruby finally has enough, she additionally calls them out for using her as a pet to justify how they resolve their own issues (I.e., Blake condemning even the most sympathetic White Fang members like Ilia because of her experiences with Adam, and Yang trying to paint the whole story like fairy tale by pinning all the world's problems on Salem just because she had a hand in killing Summer Rose despite them both knowing the truth is much more complicated than that), in addition to the more serious ones at hand. It comes to the point she abandons the group and attempts to end her own life, leaving her team completely wrecked. Yes, even the Wide-Eyed Idealist is human and not someone to overly rely on.
- The real world is not a fairy tale. Sometimes there will be no victory, good intentions can make things worst, and doing your best won't always save the people you care about. Every member of Team RWBY and JNPR find themselves facing terrible situations and all they can do is make the best out of it but the results are almost never satisfying because no amount of preparation or effort can guarantee everyone involved will get their happy ending.
- Ruby and Jaune are constantly crushed under The Chain of Command and every casualty from their side is a blow to their self-esteem. Their struggle shows how incredibly taxing it is to be placed in a position where the safety of others is dictated by your abilities and no amount of training will prepare you for the guilt that comes with failure. Although the two grow immensely as the series progresses, they still find themselves in situations where it's downright impossible to save everyone and demonstrate how learning from your mistakes will not stop you from making more in the future.
- Blake wishes to find a peaceful and effective way to fight for equality but always finds herself relying on violence to protect her friends and family. Some people cannot be reasoned with as demonstrated when Yang and her are forced to kill Adam in self-defense after offering him several opportunities to leave them alone. The reality is violence is a necessary consequence when words and laws can't get through people, especially abusers who will doggedly refuse to acknowledge the pointlessness of their crusade and just let it go.
- In an inversion of this, the Hard Truth Aesop for Adam is that you sometimes just need to know when to call it quits. Letting your wounded ego and desire to harm your enemies drive your actions will only end badly, especially when you literally have nothing to gain from it and are ultimately just throwing away your life for no reason even after your enemy decided to show you mercy.
- Ironwood and Ozpin are an unusual case of this, in that their actions are layered with the outside facade of being "rooted in reality". However, their circumstances and subsequent behaviors reveal that they have a strong expectation that the world will just function according to what they believe should happen, even if reality goes against it. Ironwood has a high position in Atlas being both the head of its Academy and the General of its Military, and thus believes that Atlas' military might would be what will win the war against the Grimm. In reality, Atlas isn't as autonomous as Ironwood believes it to be, as it's also home to arrogance, elitism, and Cultural Posturing. While this was something that Ironwood had seen for himself, his Fatal Flaw was thinking that he could control both that part of Atlas and the underbelly that Atlas prefers to ignore.
- Ozpin is shown repeatedly to use fairytales as his way of trying to understand his current situation or to explain the situation to others (Using fairytales to explain the conflict between himself and Salem as being Black-and-White Morality, while the actual situation is much messier and more complicated than that, or thinking he could use the Staff of Creation to uplift Atlas as a symbol of humanity's greatness, only for it to backfire and turn Atlas into an authoritarian nightmare). The end result is that his methods end up failing miserably when pitted up against reality, which is too complicated to neatly fit into these kinds of categories, and unintentionally causes more damage than helps, especially compared to the far more pragmatic Salem.
- It's also reconstructed in that while it's true that the world isn't a fairytale, and the reality is that you can't always fix everything or achieve a total victory, it is still possible to make one's way towards a better ending if one is willing to work towards it and to keep trying. Yang and Blake's romantic situation would have been broken under any other circumstance due to Blake's fear from Adam's abuse causing her to abandon Yang (who has severe abandonment issues), and it does cause them serious tension and difficulty in the aftermath. But because both of them are willing to work through their issues and communicate with each other, they are not only able to repair the damage, but come out of it better, stronger, and closer than ever eventually culiminating in the closest thing to a fairy tale romance in the entire series when they confess their love to each other in a magical thunderstorm. It is hard, and it isn't always guaranteed, but the effort and willingness to try is very much worth doing.
- No amount of complaining about how "you never wanted this" will ever amount to anything. Your life has been decided by the bad choices of those who came before you, and even if you are wildly unqualified for a job, everyone will still demand that you fix it or they will hold you accountable for its failure. Oscar learns this lesson when he's chosen to be the next Ozma and forced out of his peaceful life at a very young age. No one, not even the good-natured heroes, ever question if the kid should become involved in the war against Salem and simply expect him to play the role that's been assigned to him as his failure could lead to the world's end. Although Ozpin and Ruby offer words of sympathy and encouragement, the truth is they can't do anything about Oscar's situation and the boy is stuck with a large burden on his shoulders.
- Trust is always a tricky thing, and recognizing that someone handled it poorly is no guarantee that you can do any better. Early in Volume 6, the heroes harshly and justifiably call out Ozpin for his rampant secrecy and lack of trust regarding an Awful Truth, causing him to retreat into himself while the heroes vow to approach the issue more honestly and united. When it comes time to tell Ironwood about what happened, however, they see that he's not ready to hear everything and decide to temporarily hold off with the full truth, uneasily aware that this is essentially what they berated Ozpin for doing while two of them ironically leak information that Ironwood told them to keep secret. When they do finally tell Ironwood of Ozpin's secrets, while he initially reacts calmly to the news (albeit needing some time to process this), once he got wind that Salem had already made her move as well as realizing that his own secrets were leaked, he began rapidly Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and declaring that the heroes are his enemies. Ultimately, the heroes admit that trust and secrecy are far more complicated than they previously thought, which on a positive note allows them to let go of their lingering anger and reconcile with Ozpin.
- Clinging onto a single philosophical worldview and doing anything to uphold it only causes damage those around you. A notable case is the Brother Gods, who were exiled from Ever After for this very reason: the Light Brother especially insists on upholding the Balance Between Good and Evil, with two equal forces constantly at odds with each other, when the Tree finds it more of an ecosystem. This had put him into conflict with his Dark Brother on several occasions to the point of toxicity whenever he wanted to do something to impress his older brother or outright anyone. And such refusal to learn this lesson, has caused problems in both Ever After and Remnant that last even now.
- Boy Meets Boy ends with the lesson that people change, friendships don't last, and you'll probably have to settle for second best, because the love of your life simply isn't interested.
- Cyanide and Happiness: This strip
explains that criticism is not only useful, but essential to proper development. It features a father bluntly telling his son, who failed a spelling bee but still got a participation award, that he isn't automatically special and wonderful; he has to work for it. The dad is careful to distinguish this from parental love: "You are special to me, because you're my son. However, you aren't special to everybody else." He goes on to say that praising people regardless of their skill level and never giving useful, constructive criticism can be just as detrimental as mocking others. Criticism exists to make people aware of their own shortcomings, which in turn lets them become better people, and it's important to provide it. There's also a subtler Aesop about how being a parent means occasionally saying unpleasant things to your children, even if it hurts their feelings—it's better for such things to be said by someone who genuinely loves you rather than a bully.
- El Goonish Shive had one at the end of "Death Sentence": When confronted with a bad situation, one shouldn't simply decide that the worst outcome is inevitable and plan for that. People should, by all means, try to make better plans so that things might end peacefully and without anyone getting hurt. However, what they need to remember is that sometimes that isn't going to work at all, and their plan might be doomed from the beginning, and so if their plan goes to hell, they should be prepared for the bad ending- but that doesn't mean that they should stop making plans where Everybody Lives. It's a pretty depressing message, though the rather idealistic character to whom it gets delivered accepts it (but not happily).
- One of the possible endings to Friendly Hostility teaches us that even with the best intentions, you can't force a relationship to last.
- Jack has a few overarching themes in its stories, mostly centering on the nature of sin, punishment, repentance, and redemption, understandable for a comic about Heaven and Hell. One of these is that almost no one is good enough to get into Heaven, and almost everyone who goes Hell will never get out… not because of anything they do or don't do personally, but because Hell itself can screw them out of their chance at redemption.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal features in-universe humorous examples.
- For example
, the hare put in far less effort than the tortoise, but still got second place, which is, you know pretty freaking good.
- The Uncomfortable Truthasaurus
gives us several nasty ones. Not everyone has a talent or is smart, and the ones that have "special talents" had to work a lot to acquire said talents. What virtually everyone wants in a relationship is someone attractive and of high social status.
- For example
- Sluggy Freelance ends the "Aylee"
Story Arc with An Aesop that you should always stand by and trust your friends, even if there's a very real chance they might destroy all life on Earth
.
- Penny Arcade has one that combines
an Imaginary Friend with a Precision F-Strike.
- ''Pepper&Carrot": In the episode 35
, Pepper is about to kill the person who is purchasing her, but changes her mind at the last second, not wanting to betray her values and become a murderer, even if it implies the acceptation of her defeat. Word of God confirmed that victory at any price is not always a good thing, especially when it implies betraying our own values.
- Walkyverse has "Morals mean diddly squat without experiences to back them up… which is a license to screw around and do stupid things".
- The Oglaf strip Bilge
teaches one in a humorous manner; hard work, sacrifice, and dedication mean nothing without practical knowledge and skills. The plot is that a group of villagers have spent months building a ship to fight the Vikings, but the finished ship itself is utter crap and stands no chance in an actual fight. One of the villagers tries to get them to back out of fighting by saying, essentially, that no amount of hard work and determination can create good products without knowledge of how to properly make it. The other villagers ignore him, not wanting to have wasted their work, and promptly suffer a humiliating defeat.
A lot of people gave very selflessly to build this warship so we can go out and battle the Vikings. But the time has come to admit that hard work and hope are no substitute for actual knowledge, and that we've made a really shitty ship. If we sail this ship against the Vikings, we'll be massacred immediately. I suggest we break it up for scrap, never speak of it again. - The Order of the Stick strip 1315
: Even if you have the best of intentions and carefully consider the information available to you, your actions may still produce catastrophic consequences due to circumstances you had no way of knowing about at the time.
- One of the central messages of Loving Reaper, which focuses on Death helping the spirits of deceased animals move on, is that a pet is an enormous, lifelong responsibility, not a toy you can ignore or get rid of once you get bored with it, and you should think of the animal's well-being before you decide to buy or adopt one.
- In Dragon Ball Z Abridged's rendition of Android 16's pep talk to Gohan before he goes Super Saiyan 2, it goes from an understanding speech about how it's not wrong to fight for what you love to 16 viciously ripping Gohan apart for acting like he's the only one of the Z Fighters who suffers, and for rigidly sticking to his pacifist principles instead of doing the right thing while his father and all his friends are getting beaten to death.
Android 16: Cell was right. You think you're better than everyone else. But there you stand, the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs, and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns. You were a coward to your last whimper.
- The Aesop of "Why Lying is OK!" by Matthew Santoro is that some lies are necessary for society to function and that always telling the truth is a bad thing.
- Discussed at length in The Nostalgia Critic's "Top 11 The Simpsons Episodes", where he names "Bart Gets an F" his favorite episode of the show, in large part, because it's the rare piece of pop culture that's brave enough to teach "Failure is an unavoidable part of life — and we all fail sometimes, even when we try our very hardest." He argues that this is one of the most important lessons that anyone can learn, but admits that it's rarely used as An Aesop in pop culture because it's so much more uplifting to show a protagonist succeeding through hard work. In the same episode, Critic discusses this trope when naming "Homer's Enemy" one of the 11 best episodes of the show. He sums up the episode's moral as "Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no reason, and sometimes dumb people are rewarded more than smart people", but argues that the episode is brilliant because it faces such a grim message so unapologetically, and manages to make it surprisingly funny.
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Your salary comes from somewhere; a workplace with good working conditions and good pay may have engaged in unethical business practices in order to achieve them. During the Mysterious Somebody era, PPC agents were paid well and had reasonable working hours, but the organization also ran a factory that manufactured Mary Sues for profit and had a brutal Secret Police department meant to protect their dark secrets.
- Rejected Princesses
:
- It is not reasonable to expect creators, especially professional ones, to always do it for the art. Sometimes Money, Dear Boy content is necessary to keep creation operations afloat and put food on creators' table.
- Being well-produced doesn't mean a piece of content will be well-received; making a groundbreaking masterpiece does not mean anything if nobody goes to see it.
- CGP Grey: "Rules for Rulers" is one long, sobering explanation of why corruption, backstabbing, seemingly irrational decisions are Inherent in the System. Whether in a democracy or a dictatorship, power is mainly about controlling wealth and who gets it. If you want to hold onto power, you have to engage and even kowtow to powerful interests by giving them a share of the "treasure" (straight-up cash in dictatorships, more legal favors like subsidies and tax breaks in democracies). If you don't and instead spend that treasure on other things- such as improving the lives of your citizens- someone offering them that money will convince them to overthrow you. You also can't avoid systems of power, since they exist in everything from governments to corporations to tiny HOAs. The most you can do is ensure the least powerful and most honorable members of a system also have influence, as they keep the truly selfish and treacherous in check if everyone benefits more than just a few. But even after explaining this, it's also made clear that without power, you can't affect anything. If you want to see change, it's a game you have to know how to play - and that dictatorships often end up ruining themselves because one can have a system that benefits many agents or one than benefits the guys on top and nobody else - and a system without strong supports is fragile, miserable, or both.
- The Homestuck Epilogues has the aesop "not everyone you were close to as a teen will grow up to be a good person." To this end, it performs a major Happy Ending Override on Homestuck, and shows how the protagonists of Homestuck—characters that people have followed and cared about for years—fail to overcome the beliefs and social pressures of the worlds they were born in and slowly become neglectful, apathetic, and sometimes abusive to their loved ones. Two of them even become outright terrible people.
