Aesop Cleanup

YMMV.Big Mouth: I don't think some of these Accidental Aesops are accidental, and others just lack explanation of where they came from.

• Accidental Aesop
  • The responsibility parents have for helping their children through problems. When left to their own devices (or the care of the hormone monsters), the kids gravitate towards irrational, sometimes cruel behavior. However, their parents don't always have the best answers and following their advice sometimes makes their problems worse. So the moral? "Being an actual good parent is a lot of hard work, but it's really important" Or, more cynically, "Even if you try as hard as possible to be the best parent you can be for your child, you're going to make mistakes that will effect them simply because Humans Are Flawed." This one could count because the show isn't about the parents most of the time, so their aesops don't usually focus on them, but the show does provide some hard truths about parenting.
  • The plot of "The ASSes" is kicked off by Jay selling his prescription meds to other students, which affects them all negatively. While the intended morals are that Drugs Are Bad and it's wrong to cheat, the bigger takeaway is that you shouldn't take drugs that aren't meant for you and only use prescription drugs as directed. I'm pretty sure that's just part of the Drugs Are Bad aesop.
  • Feminists need to learn to clearly articulate their expectations of men and stop being the Master of the Mixed Message or Moving The Goal Posts. Even sympathetic guys who want to be allies often find it difficult because they are forced to guess what women want and are harshly condemned if they get it wrong. Which tends to push male allies away, making women even angrier and just creating a vicious cycle of mutual resentment. This one really could stand to add some context because it could be very contentious.
  • Activists make terrible boyfriends (see Acceptable Targets above). "See X above" ZCE.
  • Feminists are just as capable of being mean and horrible to other women and girls as misogynistic men because they sometimes don’t want to admit that they are holding other women to standards that they don't meet themselves. This was an intended aesop. The girls bullying Missy for not being part of the Slut Walk are depicted as being in the wrong.
  • Anyone and everyone is capable of horrible behavior, and sometimes it’s hard to forgive them. If you can’t, then it's OK, but you have to cut them out of your life. If you don’t, you run the risk of becoming just as bad as them (albeit in a different way). I don't know what specific scenes taught this lesson.
  • Middle school is rough on everyone, and (almost) everyone changes and eventually evolves into a much better person by freshman year of high school. "Middle school is rough on everyone" is basically the point of the show. The show does intend to teach that you are not defined by your past mistakes - Season 4 makes a more explicit point about it.
    • While Jay and Matthew still have a way to go, they are capable of change (despite what their classmates think), and they both become better and happier people. Matthew becomes nicer and gets a boyfriend, and Jay, after getting a loving family for a while, gives it up for his friend Nick when he sells his medication, mainly because he believes his ADHD medicine would help everyone with a stressful test (it doesn’t). He becomes accepted by his family in the season finale, which is something he’s always wanted. Luckily though Coach Steve is also (almost) always around (and Nick’s parents are only a phone call away) so Jay still (kinda) gets the parental care he needs. In the next season he also gets a girlfriend in Lola.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 4th 2021 at 6:17:49 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I want to say something about the SpongeBob SquarePants S6 E14: "Dear Vikings"/"Ditchin'" example that was brought here.

I thought I remember this being brought up somewhere before and was supposed to be cut, because this entry misses that all those good things that happened to Spongebob were ruined because he was scared of being caught.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Drawn Together has this entry which was moved from the main page to YMMV because it's subjective, even though Broken Aesop is (for now) an objective trope. I think it has potential to be valid (a movie insisting cartoons shouldn't have aesops...while the movie is dedicated to that very aesop, as well as chastising cartoons that shoehorn in political messages despite a Running Gag satirizing the Palestine/Israel conflict) but it does read as very complainy as written, particularly that sub-bullet.

• Broken Aesop: The Movie has a moral that defeats its own purpose. Near the end of the movie, the protagonists decide that they don't want a point and believe that "offensive" humor shouldn't need moral justification. This has horrible implications - since this kind of humor only works if it's worked into a moral so there is something to mock or is portrayed with good jest. Yet virtually every joke is made as offensively grotesque as possible, and is either drawn out, mean-spirited, or both. The movie does everything possible, including necrophilia, to prove why we would not want to see creators make "offensive" comedy for no reason. In addition to this, the moral is pretty much a paradox in its own existence, since its doing the very thing it's preaching against. Sure, there might be some justification for an Anvilicious message about why heavy handed morals are bad and it's likely supposed to be ironic, but it sure doesn't do a good job indicating so.
  • On top of this, the movie constantly rips on South Park for supposedly being crude humor with lazily tacked-on morals added to justify it. The fact that that's inaccurate aside, that would pretty accurately describe this very movie's own situation. This is made worse with the fact that it's a blatantly false aesop that insults the very idea of making works purely for entertainment purposes. There's no point in pushing the envelope without good reasoning.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

This Accidental Aesop entry from Wonder Woman 1984 seems like a shoehorn:

• Accidental Aesop: An object being made of citrine, a stone used for forgeries, may be more valuable than it seems. Handle with caution in case that value is more negative than positive.

Not sure how this is supposed to even be an Aesop, intentional or otherwise.

Edited by Adept on Jan 11th 2021 at 10:40:35 PM

I haven't seen the movie, but I don't understand that entry at all.

This Broken Aesop entry for Kung Fu Panda was recently cut:

"Kung Fu Panda has a Be Yourself message, that the secret to limitless power is belief in oneself. The Dragon Scroll isn't blank, it's reflective. It breaks because the whole reason Po sticks with his training instead of quitting is because he feels inadequate and he thinks Shifu can make him not himself. On top of this, Hard Work Hardly Works is in play; Po is an Instant Expert who masters an instant-death attack after seeing it performed once or twice, and his naturally pudgy, fuzzy body makes him immune to Tai Lung's most powerful abilities. And then there's Tai Lung himself; since the scroll has nothing written on it and had nothing in it to abuse, there was never any reason to keep him from reading it except to arbitrarily deny it to him. The end result is that self-respect may be the key to true power, but only the Chosen One actually deserves to have self-respect."

The troper who cut this entry gave the following reasoning:

"How exactly is that supposed to make sense? Po did feel inadequate, but the whole point of his training wasn't to make him not himself, it was to show him he already had all the things he needed to be the Dragon Warrior. As for Tai Lung, Po lets him see it before the end of their fight, and he doesn't get the Aesop, and most of the time they keep it from him is because they do think it will give him great power, and the rest is as a way to draw him away from hurting others. This idea of a Broken Aesop seems flimsy to me, and based on a weird mesh of meta and non-meta that doesn't fit with everything that happens in the movie. To put it another way: Po's training was about showing him he already had all the skill he needed and that what he really needed to do was believe that he could be better in his own unique way, not because he was an Instant Expert, but because he had already taught himself most kung-fu through his fanboy obsession with it. As for Tai Lung, I said what I needed to say, he is given the Aesop that you already have all you need to be great, but rejects it, and for most of the movie no one realized that was the point of the scroll, and Po used the scroll after he realized that to fight Tai Lung, because he was still a threat to others."

I agreed with the entry before I saw their reasoning, but not knowing the movie as well as I used to, I am now unsure. The counterarguement makes a pretty good case for cutting it, but the sheer length of it (they needed two edits just to get the full arguement out), makes it feel like a fanboy going out of their way to defend their favorite movie, so is this a valid cut, or should the entry be reinstated?

YMMV.Pokemon The Series Diamond And Pearl:

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The intended message behind Ash and Paul's rivalry was to point out the flaws in both their philosophies: Paul's harsh regimen crosses into abusive territory when it goes too far, while Ash's strict adherence to The Power of Friendship has led him to rely on blind faith over strategical thought. Over the course of the series, they grow to see each other's point and respect their differences, both of them changing for the better. However, critics of the series feel like Paul's dominance over the rivalry paints him as the correct one, as he's shown to outmatch Ash even in his most cruel appearances.

Last I asked AAI requires it be able to coexist as opposed to contradict the intended Aesop, otherwise it's complaining and Broken Aesop. Is this an example of contradicting?

It should mention Technician vs. Performer

Edited by Nen_desharu on Apr 12th 2021 at 10:51:31 AM

Kirby is awesome.

I'll add that but it doesn't address my question on if it's AAI or too contradictory to the intended Aesop so Broken Aesop instead.

YMMV.Maleficent has this:

• Anvilicious: Maleficent's wings being stolen is not remotely subtle about being a rape allegory, the bad guys in the story are all men, Maleficent is the female leader of a good guy army and the bad guy armies are led by men, any empowered men are shown to be evil, and the kiss that wakes Aurora up is from a woman.

This smells a bit of complaining; I'm not sure what should I do with this.

Edited by Tenebrika on Apr 24th 2021 at 5:36:39 PM

Other than the bit about the rape allegory, it's not explicitly saying what they believe the heavy-handed message is, and some of the details they pointed out seem too subtle to even be Anvilicious. It would be anvilicious if a character just outright said "women are amazing and men are trash" as the entry seems to imply, but I don't recall that happening so IDK if it actually is anvilicious.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

This. The message is supposed to be heavy-handed but it isn't clear what message this entry is even talking about. :) I, too, don't recall characters saying "women are amazing and men are trash." Will it be okay to delete the entry, then?

Edited by Tenebrika on Apr 25th 2021 at 1:20:36 AM

I feel like the rape allegory is stretching it.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Actually it was entirely intentional according to Jolie.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

The example does nothin' to demonstrate how it's excessively forced.

Edited by Delibirda on Apr 24th 2021 at 9:36:00 PM

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

It doesn't even make sense. The prince is still a good guy, just a ditz, and there's also Diablo.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

All right, I destroyed it. :)

HardTruthAesop.Live Action TV

• Bitter Goth girl Ellie has to learn to trust people again after her boyfriend abandons her and sticks her with the rent. Specifically, she learns to trust both her new roommate — a recently reformed schoolyard bully who wants to gamble with their rent money — and her mother, a recovering alcoholic who once burned their house down in a drunken stupor. Both of them turn out to be completely trustworthy. Ellie does learn that trust does need to start with herself, but this is on the extreme idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, so idealistic that it can feel like "take candy from strangers."

This was apparently removed but added back. The last part sounds more like complaining against the Aesop and something so idealistic seems at odds with "Hard Truth". Thoughts?

Sounds like a relic of Family-Unfriendly Aesop. Hard Truth Aesop by its very definition shouldn't be unrealistically idealistic, so I'd cut it. Maybe it better fits Informed Wrongness?

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 26th 2021 at 4:12:29 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I deleted this Broken Aesop entry from Big Mouth a while ago, because I believe the musical was meant to be depicted as toxic:

• Disclosure the Movie: the Musical, tries to be the Me Too! episode, but also plays male #MeToo stories for laughs and uses one as an example of female sexual empowerment.

However, ~doomsday524 re-added it with the reasoning, "The narrative seemed to encourage Mona's lionizing of the character, I didn't see where it was portrayed as spurious."

I still think the example as is doesn't fit the trope. Jessi calls out the musical Disclosure as problematic, albeit more because it discourages women from speaking out about abuse by pulling the False Rape Accusation trope. I think the entry could maybe be valid if it more clearly explained how Missy finding the role of an abusive boss empowering contradicted the point about Disclosure being a crappy story, but from what I remember about the episode, I don't think Missy ever actually took advantage of Nick. They were just playing those roles and developed mutual attraction to one another in the process.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I think it could it if the show treated Missy being more empowered by the role was the good thing. I know most of her Character development was to be more coming out of her shell. Bit its been. Long time.

Theatre.Avenue Q

• Broken Aesop: "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist". The message is that everyone's a little bit racist, but certain lines come off less as "everyone makes incorrect assumptions about other based on race" and more as "At Least I Admit It." For example, Kate, Princeton, and Gary laughing at Christmas Eve's accent, then telling Brian to "come off it" when he defends her, is more than a "little" racist.

The way this entry is worded makes it seem more like Alternate Aesop Interpretation.

Edited by PlasmaPower on May 18th 2021 at 5:06:42 AM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

They told Brian to "come off it" because he was being a hypocrite- since the very next verse shows that he's also racist in his own way, and he's even called out for it by Eve herself. So I think this entry is just straight up misinterpreting the song.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The song has... issues, but I think the Alternate Aesop Interpretation entry and the Strawman Has a Point entry already on the YMMV page cover it.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

WebAnimation.Super Mario Bros Z (under the Reboot's tropes):

• Space Whale Aesop: From episode 1: Don't take things that aren't yours, or a homicidal hedgehog robot from another dimension will destroy you.

I'm like 99% sure this is a shoehorn; the character on the receiving end of this "aesop" is a nameless Goomba from a 1-minute scene at the start of the episode, and the way the scene plays out makes it obvious that there's no "lesson" in question, just a warning to the audience that Metallix is willing to harm innocent bystanders for his own goals (never mind that the Chaos Emerald is no more his than it is the Goomba's).