Warp That Aesop / Theatre

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• Musicals in general: If your play is sucky, people will completely ignore that as long as the music is good.
• 13: Don't try to make friends outside of your normal group of friends, because they will turn out to be fake and you'll alienate your real friends.
  • Nothing bad will happen to you if you steal your best friend's boyfriend and destroy her reputation in the process.
• The Adding Machine: You're condemned to eternal suffering and oppression not because of anything you did or didn't do, but because of what you are and always were. Even literally starting your life over will only make it worse.
• Attila:
  • Someone is about to invade your native land? Offer to help them conquer the world in exchange for your country's throne. Your countrymen will remember you as a hero.
  • If you and your fiancee are undercover among enemies and aren't supposed to even know each other very well, according to your masquerade, constantly act jealous towards her and maybe even start a quarrel or two.
• Avenue Q: It’s okay to be an asshole, we’re all going to die anyway
  • That's the intended Aesop.
• The Book of Mormon: Religious belief means sometimes you have to lie to black people.
  • The easiest way to get a girlfriend is to start a cult.
• Cavalleria Rusticana: If you're a man, you can have sex all you want (as long as your partner's not a married woman), but if you're a woman and you have premarital sex even once, your ass is grass, you whore! Even the Pope will lose no time in excommunicating you.
  • If you're a married man and you find out that someone has stolen your wife, then Violence Really Is the Answer.
• Chicago: Murder is a good way to launch a successful career in show business.
  • Murderesses make ideal heroines of musicals, but Nice Guys don't really belong in them.
  • If you like musicals, you're a murderous monster.
  • It's perfectly logical to murder your boyfriend over popping bubblegum.
• The Drowsy Chaperone: "Lovely is Always Lovely in the End", even without a good reason.
• Elisabeth: Don't trust your ability to decide who to marry. Maybe the Grim Reaper is in fact the one romancing you, and he will get you in the end anyway.
• Evita: It's fine to make your way to the top by whatever means necessary and embezzle money and generally be corrupt as long as that was how everyone else did it before you.
  • (Meta) A story is much more interesting if the female is the scheming one, Real Life be damned.
• Hadestown:
  • If your partner is an unsuccessful artist and you get a job at a major company to support yourself, you'll lose your identity and you're literally evil. Instead, you should wait for him to hit it big.
  • Wanting to be able to trust your partner is an unreasonable expectation. You have to take their word as a matter of blind faith, or you don't deserve them.
• Hamlet: Never hesitate too much before killing people.
  • If you're living under the thumb of a murderer who hasn't shown interest in killing you, don't kill him, but don't make peace with him either. The best thing to do is to antagonize him and murder people close to him until he wants to murder you too.
  • If you're a woman who marries a questionable man to protect yourself and your family, that makes you evil. It doesn't matter that you don't really have other options.
• Hairspray: A proper education is for losers. Break the rules, because detention is where the party is. Your high school romance, which is built solely on good times and bragging rights, will last forever. So forget about your education, find a partner, and have a blast. Life is just one big dance party.
  • "Who cares about sleep when you can snooze in school, you'll never get to college but you'll sure look cool..."
  • Being a person of color under Jim Crow and being considered conventionally unattractive are basically the same thing.
  • Winning one music contest solves racism forever.
• Hamilton: It's totally okay to use someone's personal tragedies to promote your own agenda and completely change their story to fit your narrative. After all, they're dead so they can't object.
  • All white people are evil, and no matter how talented they are or how hard they work, they don't deserve to be leads in a musical over people of color.
  • Alexander Hamilton is always right.
  • Having a tragic backstory or an unrequited love excuses all the terrible things you've done.
  • People of color were not important to American history. White people did everything.
    • To get ahead in politics, make sure you make nice with racists. Strong opponents to racism are reckless and will probably end up dead.
  • If your parents are fighting, you should engage in reckless behavior to bring them closer together. If you die, that's fine — they'll come together for sure.
  • Women Are Wiser but should expect that nobody will ever take their advice about anything.
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child:
  • Some people just need to die for the sake of a better world. Whether said person actually deserves to die or not is completely irrelevant.
  • If a strictly honorable Nice Guy doesn't win an international competition, he will become a Nazi. Beware.
• The Iceman Cometh: It’s okay to be an asshole and tell everyone to give up on what you believe to be delusions and pipe dreams. And if they refuse to recant their beliefs, you have every right to kill them. After all, we’re all going to die anyway.
• Into the Woods: Nice is different than good; you can't be both nice and good.
  • Personal responsibility is a stupid concept, you should never be expected to own up to your mistakes.
• Jenufa:
  • Handsome blond men are irredeemable abusive drunkards. When someone else is being abusive, they're just conflicted and will become better soon.
  • The guy who slashed your face with a knife is your One True Love.
• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Believe in your dreams, because dreams do come true... at least if you have the supernatural ability to interpret dreams.
  • Don't try to murder your brother, because someday he might be the co-ruler of Egypt.
  • The ability to interpret dreams is perfect basis for you to become a king's second-in-command, even if you've had no previous political experience.
  • If you find yourself with life-or-death power over people who did you wrong years ago, who are now starving and begging you to save them, feel free to psychologically Kick Them While They Are Down, emotionally torture them, and stop just short of permanently imprisoning one of them for a crime you framed him for. As long as you eventually forgive them, it's all cool.
  • A female-on-male rape attempt is funny.
• La Bohème:
  • Don't become an artist or a writer. You'll end up dirt poor and your girlfriend will either leave you for someone richer or get sick and die.
  • It's okay to spend months emotionally abusing your gravely ill girlfriend as long as it's a Break Her Heart to Save Her ploy. She'll wholeheartedly forgive you and you never even have to admit it was wrong.
  • Killing a parrot is the best way to make quick money. Besides, any animal that makes too much noise deserves to die.
• La Traviata: A sex worker is only redeemable and worthy of love if she sacrifices everything for a man and goes through a massive Break the Cutie process to save his family's honor from the stain of her reputation. Oh, and even if she does all that, she's still not pure enough for a happy ending. It's best if she dies of an Incurable Cough of Death, urging her lover on her deathbed to marry a virgin.
• The Last Five Years: You can cheat on your wife for wanting to be close to you and share your success instead of playing second fiddle as long as do while singing the best song in the show.
• Little Shop of Horrors, stage only: This Loser Is You, and any attempt to change that will end disastrously.
  • Movie version: Being present when someone dies, even if you could have helped them and didn't, isn't the same as murder - and it's morally acceptable if it brings you fame and fortune.
  • Also from the movie version: It doesn't matter how many people you kill or how it backfires on you, because it will always turn out right in the end.
  • Plants are evil. We should pave over all greenspace to stop them.
  • Murder is okay. Just be sure you don't feed the body to invasive species afterwards.
• Macbeth:
  • Ambitious women are evil. Also, trying to make your wife happy is a bad idea.
  • If you feel pricking, you should consider that any person coming to you is wifked.
  • Life is pointless and thus there is no point of doing anything in your life.
• The Magic Flute:
  • All women are either deceitful harpies or overemotional weaklings; only men can be trusted with power, and if a woman tries to reclaim the power she feels is rightfully hers, she deserves to plunge into eternal night.
  • Kidnapping a young girl is okay if you dislike her mother.
  • Slavery is perfectly fine; black men are horny would-be rapists who need white masters to control them.
  • A man who faints at the sight of a snake is the perfect choice to send on a dangerous heroic mission.
• The Marriage of Figaro:
  • It's a wife's duty to forgive her cheating, emotionally abusive husband – but only if they're aristocrats. Among the working class, if your wife hits you, it just shows how much she loves you.
  • All women are wiser than and morally superior to all men, and destined to go through life constantly outwitting them, fixing their mistakes and forgiving them whether they deserve it or not.
  • A 13/14-year-old boy whose voice hasn't even changed yet should be treated as an adult. Feel free to ship him off to the army, and if you suspect your wife of sleeping with him, it only counts as adultery, not hebephilia or statutory rape. (Probably Truth in Television for the time period.)
• Maria Stuart: Absolute monarchy is the best idea ever. Absolute monarchs are the best monarchs. Allow a little bit of democracy and your ruler will develop severe psychological issues.
• The Merchant of Venice...okay, I'm done now.
• The Miracle Worker: Force-feeding a disabled child is a good and admirable idea, and will in no way cause the child to choke to death.
  • Being gentle with a disabled child doesn't pay, period. You need to be willing to slap her and force-feed her if you want her to learn or amount to anything.
• Miss Saigon: Hang in there, baby.
• Next to Normal: When your mother is undergoing dangerous treatment for severe mental illness, use the distraction to blatantly abuse prescription drugs and mistreat your boyfriend. Everyone will come to see you as the REAL hero in the end.
• Oklahoma!: Is the girl you love going with somebody else to the box-social? You know what would be the perfect way to win her over? Finding that other dude and talking him into killing himself. Especially if he's the desperately lonely, unstable type who might actually go for it.
• Once on This Island: If you fall in love with someone richer or whiter than you, don't follow your heart; the status quo will prove more important to him than his feelings for you.
• Ordinary Days: The things that matter most to you would look super awesome if you threw them off a building.
• Parade: You can fight an unjust court system for as long as you like, but it doesn't really matter, because even if you get them to listen, you'll still end up being lynched.
  • Also the aesop of Ragtime.
• Peer Gynt: Bluffing your way through life, dealing with slaves and generally being a Dirty Coward is acceptable as long as a pure hearted girl waits all her life for you somewhere in a mountain cabin.
• The Phantom of the Opera: You may be an incredibly talented artistic genius, but if you are not physically perfect, you are completely unlovable.
  • If you are a young, beautiful, talented, impressionable girl, then it is perfectly fine for a mysterious older man (who you can't see) to give you voice lessons alone in the middle of the night with nobody else around. In fact, he'll make you a STAR!
  • (Meta-ish) If a creepy older guy is stalking a younger girl, murders people, kidnaps the girl, and uses blackmail, just remember- Stalking is Love. It's totally okay to think the girl should get together with the guy who stalks/murders/etc. After all, All Girls Want Bad Boys, right?
• Pippin: The ultimate ambition of theatre people is for you to willingly die for their art.
• RENT: No matter what, you will find love. That love will also conveniently have HIV if you have HIV. Unless you're a white, straight, middle-class guy with no diseases or obvious sexual eccentricities. Then you'll have to be content being the voyeur for your more interesting friends.
  • Love means never having to say you're sorry for cheating on someone.
  • Love is learning to accept a person for who they are, good or bad. Heroin addiction and all.
  • If you have HIV, you are under no obligation to tell somebody before having sex with them; they'll probably have it too, anyway.
  • The Power of Love and song is enough to counteract the effects of HIV plus weeks of exposure, malnutrition, and heroin abuse.
  • Killing a dog is the best way to make quick money. Besides, any animal that makes too much noise deserves to die.
  • Being unemployed is preferable to paying your dues at a sensationalist tabloid show, where you're paid more per story than most journalists earn in a month.
  • It's perfectly okay to happily sing to your friends that you were hired to murder someone's animal for cash with a booty shake here and a drum solo there.
  • Having AIDS won't stop people from thinking that you're a jerk.
  • You cannot be an artist and hold down a job at the same time. Getting a job means you're serving the Man.
  • As long as you maintain your artistic purity by not selling out, having any talent — or even actually producing art at all — is strictly optional.
• Rigoletto: Always respect your elders. If you don't, the old man you mocked will always curse you, and your dear daughter will die in your arms.
• The Rocky Horror Show: If you find your fiancee has slept with the same guy you slept with only moments earlier, the best thing to do is to have sex with the nearest (literal) Brainless Beauty you can find for revenge....ya know...instead of confronting said fiancee and the guy you and him both slept with.
  • Also, if you don't agree with the lifestyle of your employer, the best thing to do is to shoot him.
    • Oh, and it's OK to kill someone just because they didn't like you.
  • If your car breaks down, the best thing to do is to find the nearest creepy castle you can find and ask the clearly insane Transvestite Mad Scientist alien if you can use his phone.
    • "Castles don't have phones, Asshole!"
  • Theoretically chaste spouses can easily be turned into sex-craved adulterous sluts with a little cajoling.
  • Transvestites are really space aliens who want to take over the planet have sex with every living being on the planet. And so are Transylvanians, it definitely isn't a region in Romania that you can literally visit.
  • Wanna have sex with someone you just met? Just promise said person you won't tell his/her fiance and it'll be A-OK!
  • If your story is strange enough, it'll be told by a man with no neck.
  • Secretly, everyone wishes they could dress in drag.
  • The best way to regain control of everyone as the world falls apart around you is to brainwash them and force them to perform a floorshow in an otherwise empty castle.
  • The concept of monogamy is stupid. The only way to be truly happy is to be a slut.
    • All that matters in life is to have lots of sex.
• Romeo and Juliet: It's okay to abandon your home, family, friends, and responsibilities for a guy you only met two days ago.
  • It's okay to break into someone else's property and watch a teenage girl go to sleep if you're doing it in the name of love.
  • 13-year-olds are at just the right age to fall in love and get married.
  • If you lose your lover, suicide is always the answer.
  • If you want to stop violence, the answer is child sacrifice.
  • Religious authorities are morons — don't trust them with anything important.
  • If your friends are violent, then Violence Really Is the Answer — it's not possible to negotiate a peaceful solution.
• Saint Joan:
  • Always do what a schizophrenic religious extremist says. They will lead you to victory.
  • The world will never accept the truly righteous.
• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - Kidnapping women and forcing them to live on your property for several months will cause them to stay with you and bear your children when rescue comes.
• The Snow Maiden:
  • Leaving your teenage daughter in the care of random people is the best parenting ever.
  • If a fifteen-year-old girl tells you she has no interest in romance, tell a Really Gets Around hormonal teenager and an Entitled Bastard to try seducing her.
  • If your daughter asks for a gift that will most likely kill her, give it to her with your blessings.
  • Sudden and tragic death of a fifteen-year-old girl is okay because it will bring warm weather back.
• Sorry, Wrong Number: The authorities are completely powerless to prevent a murder from occurring, no matter how much evidence is gathered ahead of time. So if anyone wants to murder you, you're screwed.
• South Pacific: Selling your daughter into marriage to a foreigner she's never met before is perfectly acceptable, especially if she can be used to teach said foreigner a lesson about racism.
  • Cheating on your girlfriend is acceptable behavior, so long as the girl you cheat with is beautiful, wears little clothing and can teach you lessons about racism.
  • Girls from the Solomon Islands are way cooler then girls from New England. Believing otherwise is racism.
  • Racism is wrong, but only lovers who are both white can get happy endings. Actual interracial relationships are doomed to end tragically.
• Spring Awakening: Go ahead, rape that girl in a hayloft. She's only saying "no", fighting back violently and sobbing because of the oppressive climate of prudishness in your quaint German village! Remember, you're liberating her! Even though you impregnate her and she has no idea what's happening to her barely-pubescent body, and her mother forces her to take abortifacent pills that end up causing a fatal hemorrhage, she'll always remember you as her faithful, adoring sweetheart! She'll come back as a ghost! You'll sing a song!
  • Adults are all the same. They are literally all the same.
  • If you are gay, you will vanish before act's end. If you are black (provided this is the Original Broadway Cast), your parents beat and sexually abuse you.
  • Never show the audience more than one boob. (Alternately: It's okay to squeal about seeing Lea Michele's breast if she's playing a 14 year old girl.)
  • All teenage boys are super horny and just think about sex all the time.
  • "Don't have sex, because you will get pregnant... and die"
• A Streetcar Named Desire: All men are abusive rapists. Yes, even the shy and quiet ones have a sex-driven beast deep beneath and will try to rape you will the opportunity come.
• Sweeney Todd: It doesn't matter how many people you kill, so long as you get revenge on the one guy who actually matters. In fact, you can easily profit from mass murder to fund your revenge. And no-one will notice. Ever.
  • Good is restored only when all the main characters are dead except the small child who has learned to kill without feeling bad about it, the randy sailor who kidnaps the judge's adopted daughter, and the girl from the loony bin.
  • Always go to a reputable barber.
  • It's perfectly fine to tell a known rapist to come round your house the very same night your daughter (who has just done a bunk from said rapist) plans to be there with her new love interest, just to gratify your own desire for revenge.
  • Telling blatant lies to a person and completely destroying their soul and humanity in order to split them up from their beloved wife always works to some extent.
  • If you fancy somebody, do anything for them. The fact that they're certifiably insane doesn't matter.
  • If you can't beat 'em, join them!
  • There is nothing creepy about a guy singing about how he wants to "steal you."
• Tosca:
  • A good romantic relationship means that you and your love interest never trust each other.
  • (Combined with Andrea Chénier by the same librettist) If you are a revolutionary-minded tenor in love with a soprano, you'll be executed for treason regardless of the political situation.
• Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier: Young people are lazy, entitled and/or idiotically unrealistic.
  • Poor people are idiots who believe in feelings over facts.
  • Homeless people are in their current state of affairs not because Society Is to Blame, but because they are lazy or psychopathic or both.
  • Try to do anything good for your fellow man and history will blame you for all of the evil in the world.
  • If you have to choose between scientific knowledge and the power of reason or magic and superstition, choose magic and superstition.
  • Anarcho-communism can solve any problem.
• Urinetown: Malthus was right. "Hail, Malthus!"
• Waiting for Godot: Never give up hope, just keep waiting.
• West Side Story: Interracial relationships lead to tragedy and bloodshed.
  • Even if you love someone very much, you're not obligated to risk your life to save him from being murdered, especially if you "Didn't See That Coming".
  • Men Are the Expendable Gender.
• Wicked: It's okay to steal your best friend's man, he loves you and is only with her for the resources to find you. And damn it if you don't fake the death of both yourself and him and run off together, your best friend will make everything better here while mourning you.
  • Trying to get your best friend captured by her worst enemies just because she "stole" your boyfriend, taking advantage of her sister's death to do it, and then getting into a physically violent catfight with her is all part of a healthy, beautiful friendship, just as long as you reconcile in the end.
  • Also, if you ask out a handicapped girl, she will subjugate your people and turn you into a heartless golem.
  • If you palm an unwanted hat off on someone, she will steal your boyfriend.
  • Unconventional people, both in looks and in beliefs, are doomed to be despised, persecuted, and either killed or forced into exile. Social change is possible, but it can only be made by a conventionally pretty person who outwardly conforms to the status quo.
  • Consider very, very carefully if you'd like to spend the rest of your life with a girl before asking her to a school dance. She will consider the two of you as good as engaged, and there will be backlash if you try to get out.
• The Wizard of Oz: Murdering friendless old ladies is the way to public acclaim.
  • Don't stay in the magical land of wonder where everybody now loves you, good girls will go back to the farm to languish in poverty and let their beloved dog put to sleep.
  • If you tell someone to Just Eat Gilligan, they won't believe you; you're much better off sending them on a suicide mission to kill your worst enemy so that they can learn An Aesop and gain some perspective.

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