Misused: Family Unfriendly Aesop

Wick rewriting is something I'm not afraid of since I imagine the end result will curb misuse.

Hard-Truth Aesop is a clear name.

Alright, I think we need a title crowner at this point. Since we all seem to agree that a rename is needed, I'm skipping the Single-Prop crowner, but if that's the wrong move feel free to yell at me. I'm adding a "no title change" option, though.

Here it is.

The crowner was never hooked but there does seem to be consensus; I had to un-bibble-bobble it though.

The winner was Hard-Truth Aesop, with 13 upvotes and only 1 downvote.

None of the others reached anything resembling consensus.

You know, looking at Laconic.Family Unfriendly Aesop, I have to ask if this is really being misused. Here's what it has to say:

• The moral of the story goes against conventional wisdom, but is not necessarily invalid (emphasis added).

This wording seems to imply that a Family-Unfriendly Aesop can be invalid.

Edited by ImperialMajestyXO on Mar 31st 2020 at 2:48:53 AM

The laconic and description use a lot of vague words to say that the Aesop doesn't "have" to be valid, but usually it's valid, but it's not necessarily valid, but...

Regardless of whether or not these aesops are deemed "valid" by the audience or not is, in and of itself, a judgement call, and everyone would see it differently. Even in my Wick Check I looked more for Aesops that were realistic, the work attempting to give wisdom to the audience even if it wasn't comfortable; the "Bad Aesop" examples were outright bashing the work, claiming that things that weren't morals were Family-Unfriendly Aesop, or taking things out of context.

So even if these Aesops don't need to be valid, the trope is still being used to bash things that:

• The work never actually claimed
• Isn't actually the moral of the work
• Things the troper just dislikes
• Anything and anything that might be considered "Bad"

In fact, I'd say we'd just be better off retooling the definition to remove the potential for the Aesops not being valid, because that opens up way too much gray area for people to post their complaints against the work whether they're accurate or not.

I mean, we're already renaming the thing based on the definition we've all been using; cleaning up the description to match would be a cakewalk in comparison.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 31st 2020 at 6:00:24 AM

I certainly see where you're coming from. Maybe we should have some kind of "split" and make a non-YMMV trope about unconventional morals, and a YMMV trope about "bad" morals (with a cleanup thread for the latter to remove examples that aren't actually meant to be morals).

The "bad" moral trope might be way too bash-y though. Seriously, look at the Wick Check, it's very unkind to the works, even the "correct" examples are written with a negative tone. The only way I can see Bad Aesop being a thing is if it's a Darth Wiki thing, putting it in YMMV would just let people keep posting their complaints everywhere.

I did edit my post to remove the "remove from YMMV" part; while I'm not opposed to that, I'm not sure it'd be necessary even with a description change, because the "unconventional" part is still a judgement call.

Yeah, my thought was that we would make it so that in order to count as an example, the message must be in the work to begin with. The subjective part should be whether or not the moral aligns with conventional wisdom, not whether the moral is actually there.

Move has been done.

2006 wicks to move or remove, as appropriate.

So if we're going with the qualification that the examples must be valid aesops and not just anything considered potentially bad, can we spruce up the description?

Yes.

Add to the description that these have to be valid aesops, not "bad" aesops.

Responding to Imperial Majesty, I've always read that in a hesitant/begrudging tone. So to me it's not saying "it's not invalid, but it can be" and more "I really don't want to say you're right, but you're right".

Hard Truth Aesop contains FamilyUnfriendlyAesop.Live Action TV and FamilyUnfriendlyAesop.Western Animation. Should they be moved to the new namespace or are we still cleaning them up?

Is the fact that we're still cleaning up the page the reason we haven't begun replacing wick yet?

Once they're cleaned up, they can be moved.

Beginning cleanup. Hard Truth Aesop: went through the Fan Works, Web Comics, Web Original folder and removed all misuse. All example of Advertising were misuse.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Apr 16th 2020 at 7:42:40 AM

With regard to Situational Aesop in page 1, how many of the cut examples would fit better there, and anyone want to TLP that, since I'm not sure how to write a good enough start for that trope? (currently wick-checking Clueless Aesop and Lost Aesop) .

I mean, we can just put in the Trope Idea Salvage Yard for the time being.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 17th 2020 at 2:54:25 PM

I removed Family-Unfriendly Aesop from YMMV.Home Page, partially because it was renamed, and partially because it's no longer YMMV (meaning it wouldn't go on YMMV Redirects, either).

Edit: Or at least I don't think it's supposed to be YMMV; this is my first post in this thread in a while, so I'll have to go over that part of the discussion.

Edit: Hold on a second... is Main.Hard Truth Aesop's non-YMMV status an oversight? If it is, then Hard Truth Aesop needs to be added to YMMV.Home Page, and Family-Unfriendly Aesop needs to be added to YMMV Redirects.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 21st 2020 at 11:12:31 AM

It's no longer YMMV. The subjectivity came from people finding "Bad" aesops.

Got it. I went a while without following this thread, and ran into some confusion when catching up a bit ago, but YMMV.Home Page has been updated to match that.

When was the de-YMMV-ifying aspect discussed? I mean, I support it, but still.

...Should we have a crowner regarding the trope's YMMV status? Unless I misread the above post, that's at least two people (with one of them being myself) who are unsure about the removal from YMMV.

I'm fine with leaving it off YMMV, regardless.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 22nd 2020 at 11:51:01 AM