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To-do list:

  • It was decided to define Broken Aesop as a work containing a lesson or viewpoint, but with the events within the work contradicting the presented lesson or viewpoint, as well as making it YMMV and allowing lessons/viewpoints that are contradicted by events that happened earlier in the work in addition to events that happened later.

    Original post 
Note: This thread was proposed by Number 9 Robotic.

Broken Aesop has been a problem trope for a while due to it being frequently misused and used as a front for complaining, which in turn is tied to what I believe are fundamental problems in how we perceive "aesops". This is being kept as a main page trope, despite the fact that it's inherently built around the analysis of analyzing a moral lesson behind a work (which is subjective interpretation) and then providing an explanation for why it's contradicted (which is also subjective interpretation). This is not a problem unique to this trope; many aesop tropes (most especially Clueless Aesop and Lost Aesop) similarly have issues rooted in revolving around several YMMV aspects, and the inherent requirement of being critical about a work in how its story is told has led to a lot of rampant editorializing, and in turn, complaining, especially in the forming of potholing to accentuate snarky entries, including in the main page. We already do categorize a few Aesop tropes as YMMV (including Accidental Aesop and Captain Obvious Aesop), which themselves also have issues of inviting bad-faith and need addressing elsewhere, but more relevant to here reflect on issues of what constitutes an "aesop" going bad to begin with.

We do have a big checklist on the main page as to what doesn't constitute a Broken Aesop by means of telling folks to back off of Ad Hominem-type complaints, but a big issue is more that some folks have very lax standards as to what an "aesop" actually is, conflating "a direct lesson the narrative has set up to convey" to "this is an implication I noticed and thought about in the story", and that seems to have been a gateway to leading to a ton of in-article preaching of problems they have with varying levels of quality. Not only that, but in a good chunk of cases of extrapolating an "aesop" then being critical about it, a not-insignificant number of wicks I've checked do not give adequate context for how the matter being complained about is directly the fault of the work itself, especially in the intended sense of "story's narrative unintentionally defying its message." Some of these takes have such a huge disconnect with the work and run on such bad faith that they border on being non-sequiturs.

My wick check for the trope is here, and here are my findings:

  • (4/52) (8%) of examples adequately describe the aesop and explains why it's "broken".
  • (4/52) (8%) describe the aesop and a related problem, but they're only occasionally interconnected.
  • (11/52) (21%) describe the aesop and a problem, but doesn't elaborate on a direct connection between the two (some of these are non-sequitur issues, and many are very loaded with derisive complaining).
  • (7/52) (13%) are complaints made based around things outside the work itself and/or in the metatext.
  • (6/52) (12%) of examples have justifying edits and Conversation in the Main Page discussing why the aesop is not broken.
  • (7/52) (13%) are examples of narratively intentional Broken Aesops (including in-universe discussion and spoofs).
  • (5/52) (10%) are ZCEs.
  • (8/52) (15%) are unclassified misuse, usually none of these are remotely "aesops" to begin with.

There's a lot of issues and I'm not entirely sure what the easy fix for this is. I don't believe the solution is merely to make Broken Aesop a YMMV trope; I think that if we want to avoid low-entry-level complaining and/or bad-faith analysis on the wiki from this trope, the standards of how we interpret what an "aesop" is on the site as a whole needs to be addressed.

Wick check:

    open/close all folders 

  • Adequately describes the aesop and explains why it's "broken": (4/52) (8%)
  • Describes the aesop and a related problem, but they're only occasionally interconnected: (4/52) (8%)
  • Describes the aesop and a problem, but doesn't elaborate on a direct connection between the two: (11/52) (21%)
  • Out-of-narrative and meta complaints: (7/52) (13%)
  • Justifying edits to discuss why it's NOT broken: (6/52) (12%)
  • Narratively intentional (including In-universe discussion or spoofs): (7/52) (13%)
  • ZCE: (5/52) (10%)
  • Unclassified Misuse/Other: (6/52) (15%)

    Adequately describes the aesop and explains why it's "broken" (4/52) 
  • Anime.KanColle: In episode 10, Fubuki is training harder and taking more risks than usual because she wants to be remodeled. As a result, she isn't getting enough sleep and nearly gets herself sunk by Abyssals during a scouting operation. Mutsuki urges her to take better care of herself, as she's not proving anything and will only hurt the people that care about her if she gets herself killed. Fubuki apologizes and realizes Mutsuki's right. Fast-forward to the end of the episode, when Fubuki engages in some live fire training with Akagi and Kaga and nearly gets herself killed...except now Mutsuki is actively cheering her on. On top of that, Fubuki gets her second remodel afterwards. This entry doesn't explicitly state that the aesop was broken vis-à-vis getting ignored, but it's close enough.
  • Anime.Speed Racer: Speed's loss to Hap Hazard is supposed to be a stab at putting your pride before others' feelings and Honor Before Reason attitudes, but it fumbles because 1. Hap Hazard proceeds to engage in serious Unsportsmanlike Gloating despite only winning on a technicality, and 2. Hap's sister seems to believe Speed intentionally threw the race for her, which he doesn't deny, so Speed ultimately still comes out with his honor and pride mostly intact.
  • Film.Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Batman's initially portrayed as having lost his way by developing into brutal, merciless killer. However, even after he has a Heel Realization, he's still shown indulging in the same kind of behavior that was previously portrayed negatively. The fact that Zach Snyder has made comments seemingly defending his killings only further muddies up the issue. This entry still very much needs context to prove its point instead of the meta complaining.
  • Video Game.Yakuza 6: The moral of the Baseball substory is that throwing boatloads of money into a cherry-picked all-star team will never beat a homegrown team with a true bond. However, the game not only allows you to, but recommends that you complete the substory by picking up all-star players from all over Japan, some of which are former major league players (such as Gorchov, Gori-san, Maetani, and Yoshida), and one of which only joins your team if you give him a million yen upfront. There's absolutely no reason to use players from the Setouchi Warriors' original lineup after you get all the gold players.

    Describes the aesop and a related problem, but they're only occasionally interconnected (4/52) 
  • Beauty And The Beast.Tropes A to D: The film's aesop "Don't be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within" is undermined by Monsieur D'Arque, the asylum master. The film's Love Interest and Big Bad—the Beast and Gaston, respectively—effectively deconstruct tropes commonly associated with their respective antithesis; the Beast looks Obviously Evil while Gaston looks like a Prince Charming, but their personalities sharply contrast with their appearances, especially after Beast is inspired to change his ways by Belle's kindness towards him. However, Monsieur D'Arque takes the Obviously Evil trope and plays it completely straight, as he looks like a walking corpse, has red eyes, and loves Gaston's manipulative plot to have Maurice thrown in the asylum unless Belle agrees to marry him, precisely because of how despicable it is. The side character does go against the moral, but the actual main focus the moral is built around (Beast and Gaston) are intact and played as intended.
  • Comic Book.Kick-Ass: The main point of the comic is essentially to be a deconstruction about why being a superhero is a completely idiotic idea in real life, with Dave being a massive This Loser Is You, while the book relies heavily on This Is Reality. Except for the story also features the impossibly badass Hit-Girl who, while presented as being not at all well-adjusted, still manages to do things no human could possibly do, and whose memetic badassery is encouraged. It undermines the 'superheroes are a stupid wish-fulfillment fantasy' when there's one who's pretty awesome and not depicted as a loser. The entry doesn't deny that Dave IS a loser though; if he is meant to be the audience surrogate and is treated as a loser, where does Hit-Girl's depiction factor into breaking it?
  • Film.Jurassic World Dominion: Although the movie's closing message is that humans, animals, and dinosaurs will have to live together after dinosaurs been unleashed back into the world by super-science, the key focus of the plot preceding this goes against this idea. Specifically, the movie pushes that the only way to save everyone from starving to death is to drive a resurrected species of giant locusts that Biosyn has unleashed to extinction, which is about as far removed from a message of peaceful coexistence as you could get — even if said locusts were genetically geared to be a threat to all others. The issue with this entry is that it assumes the film absolutely locked in its final moral at the start of the film, not approaching it as a narrative where people changed their minds due to changing circumstances as the plot moved forward (including those threatening locusts listed at the very end).
  • Video Game.Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom: During the game's development, Samir Rebib claimed that "there is no such thing as good and evil in Shiness", but this is strongly undermined in the final game, in which Zagrom is shown to have destroyed Meos's kingdom apparently for no other reason than he could. The mere fact that the dark shi exists contradicts this aesop, as everything people under its influence are shown to do is unambiguously evil, though it's unclear as to whether Zagrom was actually under its influence or just already evil before being exposed to it. Even Ayron, whose Last Words before he falls from Mantara, "the Shiness will submit you to the same suffering as me", somewhat imply him to actually be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, is needlessly cruel and willing to kill his minions for petty reasons as Crossroad shows. This almost made it to the "fully adequate explanation" tier, but that last part I feel indirectly works against its own argument. If someone is coded as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, wouldn't that fit more in the framing of gray morality than an out-and-out villain?

    Describes the aesop and a problem, but doesn't elaborate on a direct connection between the two (11/52) 
  • Animation.Three Bogatyrs: The film tries to tell that marriage requires mutual trust and independance, and the Stay in the Kitchen approach is detrimental to everyone. Still, Bogatyrs' wives end up as Damsels in Distress again and forive their husbands for leaving them alone. An anti-Stay in the Kitchen moral directly implies misogyny, but being put in danger and forgiving your husbands is not inherently misogynistic.
  • Animation.Upin & Ipin: "Gelapnya" has two of those. The first one, "Don't waste electricity", is broken since the light turns off because of a storm, not because Upin and Ipin wasting electricity throughout the episode. Upin and Ipin wasting electricity leads to nothing since Opah somehow managed to pay the expensive bill. The second one, "Do your homework early", is undermined by the fact that Upin and Ipin didn't do their homework early yet still mananged to do it anyway. Almost a ZCE since the description of the narrative is confusing and a bit inconsistent (in what way are they wasting electricity?)
  • Anime.Pokémon: The First Movie: It's a downplayed case. The dub version's "Fighting Is Wrong" message sounds strange in a series about using Pokémon to fight other Pokémon, but there's a fine distinction. In this movie, the clones and originals have a fight to the death while the rest of the series is supposed to be a friendly sport...albeit one that Pokémon are implied to sometimes die during. Kind of iffy in that the entry tries to explain why the aesop both is and isn't broken, while not entirely elaborating on the context that would lead it to be a "downplayed" example anyway.
  • Comic Book.Transformers (2019): The third Galaxies arc, "Gauging the Truth", centers around Gauge standing up for herself by deciding whether she should help the Reversionists or Arcee and Greenlight. However, this falls flat as the choice she need to make is to choose her loving mentors or a manipulative cult led by the abusive, uncaring Heretech who wants to destroy Cybertron in an attempt to force the populace to convert to his religion.
  • Film.North: The film's message is ostensibly about the value of family and accepting one's parents. There was also "home is where the heart is." It does nothing to convince the audience that North had any real world logic in going back to them.
    • How does what happens in a child's dream count as a compelling message? Those stereotypes presumably aren't prevalent in universe, so it fails show that there are far worse parents out there, which should be a relatively easy task. Even ignoring the Justifying Edit just to complain about the meta storytelling, this description of what the problem is is incredibly vague and devoid of context.
  • Film.Superman IV: The Quest for Peace: Nuclear Man, a villain meant to personify everything bad about all things related to nuclear fission, is powered by solar power of all things. While this is scientifically plausible (as the sun is basically a giant fusion bomb), it still seems silly for the villain in a Green Aesop story to be powered by one of the most environmentally friendly power sources known to man. This reads more like a Lost Aesop; there's nothing inherently contradictory in the narrative/framing of subject matter, it seems the narrative itself just isn't told very well.
  • Series.Girls: After being involved in a semi-adulterous situation, Jessa is told "You're doing it to distract yourself from becoming the person you're supposed to be." Jessa plunges into commitment by marrying Thomas-John, a guy she's barely known and who had one cameo on the show until their wedding. Because nothing says committed like a Vegas style wedding. What does commitment or a lack thereof have to do with Jessa's point?
  • Series.Romeo: During the scene from "Da New Hotness", in which Romeo's older sister got a boyfriend. She is lectured on how she is not mature enough for a relationship. Later, when the boyfriend comes over for dinner, he eats some Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce and reacts hilariously. The sister dumps him and it's presented as her being "mature." However, what would be truly mature is not breaking up with your boyfriend over something so minor. It's only "broken" based on a very YMMV assessment.
  • The Sinking City: Much of the game deals with the evils of racism (the KKK are sidequest villains) and the plight of the Innsmouth refugees. Every figure who engages in xenophobia is treated with disgust and Reed's dialogue always makes his low opinion of xenophobes clear. However, the Innsmouthers are followers of a Religion of Evil and heavily involved in the city's organized crime. Given the Deep Ones are historically villains in Cthulhu Mythos fiction, it also will confuse longtime fans of the setting. The Esoteric Order of Dagon is established as the "real" evil among the Innsmouthers but almost all of them are involved with it or at least sympathetic. It doesn't help that no matter how nice Reed is to the Innsmouthers, they will attempt to kill him multiple times. Just because both sides are evil doesn't necessarily mean that "racism is bad" is invalidated or contradicted, it just means the setting is an Evil Versus Evil plot.
  • Western Animation.Nate Is Late: "The Mermaid" episode tries to go for a Green Aesop about protecting the environment. Good enough reasoning but yet it also seems to portray humans solely in the wrong for dumping trash in the lake when the mermaids themselves never tried to contact the humans or make an effort to clean the lake themselves. Instead simply blaming Nate (who mind you told them multiple times it was an accident and wasn't trying to dump trash in the water) and forcing him to deal with the trash monster, which, ironically, took efforts from both sides to defeat. Yet the show still went with "Humans need to clean up their mess" with Nate accepting the blame for something that wasn't even in his control while the mermaids get off scot-free from their own responsibility to their home. Nothing about Nate being the scapegoat that has to learn the lesson directly contradicts the overall message at the start. This entry assumes that the mermaids are even capable of fixing the environment on their own and have the ability to "contact the humans" (like, all of them?); it's possible that those things were out of the realm of narrative possibility, but the entry doesn't prove why that isn't the case.
  • Western Animation.Maryoku Yummy: "Flip, Flop, and Float" has Maryoku getting ill and keeps trying to help her friends but only makes things worse and only gets sicker. The moral says that "when you're sick, stay in bed", but the reason why Fij and Ooka wouldn't tell the truth to Maryoku was that they did not want to offend her. So it unintentionally states that it's fine to hurt someone's feelings if it's real important. The initial moral itself is unaddressed even with the addition of a separate different, more cynical moral, which is not what a Broken Aesop covers.

    Out-of-narrative and meta complaints (7/52) 
  • Animation.Doby & Disy: On a meta-level; the entire idea that Caesar is there to teach children not to steal becomes pointless when you consider that the series started out as a mockbuster of Dora the Explorer, with Caesar himself being an expy of Swiper.
  • Comic Book.Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): According to Ken Penders, the intended message of Knuckles and Locke's subplot was that sometimes, even a loving parent can do bad things to their kid while meaning well; reportedly, Penders based it on his own relationship with his father. The trouble is, while this was meant to show that a relationship with a parent can be complex and fraught with difficulty, that doesn't describe how Penders wrote Locke and Knuckles at all—Knuckles bears no grudge whatsoever on Locke the moment he explains himself, and in an issue focusing on Locke's death in the future, Knuckles has nothing but good things to say about him. This causes the moral to instead look a lot more like "your parents always mean best for you, and that justifies anything they might do." Not only is this entry inappropriately complain-y and seems personally targeted towards its author, it sounds like the moral being broken here necessitates knowledge outside of the work and narrative itself.
  • Fanfic.Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles: One of the messages the author desperately tries to hammer in during the author's notes is that sorcery and witchcraft are bad, and that's why she's rewriting the story. That said, the prayers that make food appear and perform actions around the school are much more akin to magic rather than religious faith, and God is treated as a magic wand who conjures whatever they need by just praying for it. People who dislike the moral will point out how they're just using sorcery with a religious coat of paint over it, and those who like the moral will be able to testify that praying does not magically fill a table with cooked bacon. Based on the way this entry is written, the moral being broken here necessitates knowledge outside of the work and narrative itself.
  • Film.Buddy: The message about the dangers of keeping wild animals as pets is broken because the two pet chimps, who unlike Buddy get to stay, are portrayed as peaceful. In reality, chimps are actually more destructive than gorillas despite being smaller and weaker.
  • Film.It's Alive: The killer babies aren't to blame for their condition, but the theme of innocence must be protected loses its meaning when you consider that the babies are still extremely dangerous and unpredictable on the same level as a rabid or otherwise dangerous dog which have to be put down for the good and safety of everyone around them.
  • Tabletop Game.Racial Holy War: The White Race is superior! Except... if so, how come it needs saving? Why do all the other races have hilariously broken racial abilities but not the Whites? Seriously, Asians get extra attacks (up to 5) in melee (despite supposedly learning them from watching "fake martial arts movies"), Latinos almost always win initiative (despite being depicted as lazy), black people have powerful debuffs and Jews can bribe your character to skip their turn with no save (and since you don't get any money after being bribed this way, one has to assume that you decided to do this on the mere promise of cash, which really makes it no surprise that white people are endangered). White people on the other hand, are just people. Unless you count the inexplicable ability of some (who took the Holy Books skill) to heal others by reading from Nature's Eternal Religion or the White Man's Bible. All in all, it seem to unintentionally perfectly encapsulate one of Umberto Eco's observations on the ideology of fascism, namely that through constantly shifting rhetoric the fascists portray their (perceived) enemies as a bunch of weaklings that can easily be vanquished one moment, only to then claim that they are an overwhelming and powerful existential threat the next. Kind of a strange example since this is a tabletop game whose morals appear to be described through its gameplay than its plot (although the description of this makes it vague). In the end though, this entry is very much just a pedestal to make fun of and complain about the design and politics of this game.
  • WebVideo.Demo Reel: After the result of The Review Must Go On, Blue Patches's message of "you can't let your past consume you and you need to be excited for the future" is more than a touch awkward. Comes off more as a meta-based example of Harsher in Hindsight.
    • It also breaks the whole "Critic is evolved enough to make his own choices" message of To Boldly Flee. His decision to make his life better and change was explained and completely his own, and turning it into a paradox that he didn't understand makes him ironically bend to the whims of the real writer. This bullet point does fall in the "understands the aesop and a problem" category, but even going by how it's written, it also has very little to do with Demo Reel as its own work, and the breaking was still inflicted retroactively from decisions outside of its production.

    Justifying edits to discuss why it's NOT broken (6/52) 
  • Anime.Shadowverse: Hiiro's matches with Lucia and Shiro, who are very motivated to win at any cost, have him deliver a point that one shouldn't prioritize winning at the cost of enjoyment, but this message rings hollow when he's an Invincible Hero and hasn't lost a game on-screen. Downplayed, in that Hiiro himself plays for the love of the game and tries to have fun, regardless of the outcome. Even without the Justifying Edit, the description for why the aesop was "broken" to begin with is really vague.
  • Comic Book.One More Day: Breaks the aesop that Spider-Man is supposed to embody, as instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he dodges it by making a Deal with the Devil against the wishes of its main beneficiary and guilt-tripping his own wife into going along with it. However, in One Moment in Time, this is retconned so that Mary Jane is the one to have made the deal. For readers, rewriting history just to save the life of a single person who, in addition to wanting to die anyways and was telling you to let go, and is, let's face it, likely to die of old age in a few years anyway is simply asinine. The message then becomes "the ends justify the means", and that instead of learning how to cope with loss and move on with your life, you should hold on to what you have and never let go, even if the cost of doing so might be too high; for you and others.
  • Series.Mythbusters: Played straight and subverted. In the Viral Videos episode, they warned that the viewers shouldn't believe every video they see online... yet all four of the videos tested were Confirmed. However, they did make their own example involving Rubik's cubes, in order to show how someone could easily fake an online video. "Played straight and subverted"?
    • They would later bust other videos, such as the giant lego ball video.
  • Western Animation.Plan Bee: While film teaches the value of democracy, and yet the heroes fight to restore the old monarch.
    • Averted in that the film advocates constitutional monarchy over absolute monarchy.
  • Fanfic.The Karma of Lies: Potentially. The story revolves around the concept that evil wins when good people do nothing — Lila did incredible damage thanks to Adrien's refusal to act against her. However, part of Marinette's Karmic Jackpot stems from her opting to cut ties with him and the rest of her ungrateful classmates, which includes no longer going out of her way to oppose Lila. While probably good for her mental health, this could also be interpreted as "Oppose evil, but not when evil heaps consequences upon the complicit."
  • Film.A Serbian Film: Complaints of disturbing content aside, one of the most frequent criticisms of the film is that its supposed commentary on life in post-war Serbia doesn't come across very well, at least for non-Serbs. Not only are Miloš and his family shown to be living in a rather large and ostentatious home which is pretty at odds with their supposed financial hardshipsnote , but the portrayal of Vukmir and his snuff film crew as a supposed allegory for government corruption in Serbia (with Miloš and his family representing the civilians abused under the system) is rather abstract and too much of a worst-case scenario for most non-Serbs to take seriously. The premise hit a little closer to home—both metaphorically and literally—in the film's own native Serbia (where the collapse of the socialist welfare state and numerous war crime convictions left the majority of government staff broke, forcing several of the country's most impoverished citizens into the sex industry as a means of income), though even there, it is still very much dependent on the viewer already harboring a great deal of resentment towards its government and the means to which many Serbs must resort in order to make ends meet in a post-war society. Also a really loaded filibuster on the quality of the film.

    Narratively intentional (including In-universe discussion or spoofs) (7/52) 
  • Fanfic.100 Percent Hero: Discussed In-Universe. While talking with Toshinori about how Stain was motivated to inspire change in hero society but failed to do so, Shigeo questions if his philosophies about not thinking highly of quirks are able to get through to his peers because he's already considered the fairest of them all. His adopted father somberly remarks that those with great power have a higher chance of having their beliefs known and accepted to the world compared to those with little to no power.
  • Film.Gone Girl: Amy's "cool girl" monologue about being true to yourself is undermined by the fact that she seems as honest with Nick in her flashbacks as she's ever with anyone. Therefore, her anger seems misplaced. Likewise, Amy is incredibly unhappy when she's left to be herself and quickly falls into old patterns in order to make friends. Not to mention that one woman in a car that she focuses on as a "Cool Girl" turns out to be sitting next to another woman, not a man. It undermines Amy's point that women only act in certain ways to draw male attention, as opposed to simply being the way humans act for each other. Of course, given that Amy is a sociopath with narcissistic traits, the Aesop-breaking is likely deliberate. Also very much reads of a last-second Justifying Edit.
  • Film.Men in Black 3: Played for laughs with the cops that pull J over in 1969. I'm not sure this actually counts for the trope, even as an in-universe Played for Laughs example.
    J: Just because you see a black man driving a nice car does not mean it's stolen! [Beat] A'ight, I stole this one, but not because I'm black!
  • BioShock: In-Universe, much of the story is spent exploring how Andrew Ryan's Objectivist beliefs have eventually descended into selfishness, arrogance, and hypocrisy of the kind that he so despises in the outside world. Nothing says this better than banning religion in your city but still naming it after the Biblical Rapture. Though this could use some meat on explaining what more about Ryan's philosophies are being contradicted.
  • Mario Adventures: "Today kids, we learned that you should forgive your friends and family, no matter what. And only chase them over hell's half acre with a knife over something really important, or in my case, stupid. All in all, the moral is: A penny shaved is a penny earned... Good night kids!" Even though there isn't any context and it isn't potholed as such, this reads as an intentional Spoof Aesop.
  • WesternAnimation.Bluey: Lampshaded in 'The Claw.' Bandit says he's teaching the girls a valuable lesson about money by making their pretend claw game more realistic by demanding the girls get real coins from doing housework. When he puts in a block that would grant them as much ice cream as they want, his claw machine conveniently breaks down. He attempts to explain to the girls that this is how the world works, only to be interrupted by them tickling him. As the girls chow down on their well-deserved ice cream, Chilli asks if they learned anything today, to which they both say "nope!"
  • WesternAnimation.Chaotic: The show often does this, often with the target of the moral either not getting the lesson, the lesson is undermined, or another person blatantly breaking the moral of the episode towards the end. This first bulk is a ZCE.
    • It's outright parodied in "Battledrome of the Sexes". The entire episode, when paired with Sarah's story with Intress appears to be about how women are just as capable if not better than men, until it's revealed Peyton was only playing female creatures and Krystella was only playing male creatures. They argue amongst themselves if this means that since Krystella lost that it proves boys are better than girls, or if because Peyton won specifically using female creatures, that girls are better than boys. The episode ends with Kaz, Tom, and Sarah silently wondering what moral they're supposed to take from it.

    ZCE (5/52) 
  • Comic Book.Condorito: Oh, where to begin? Always played for laughs, though.
  • Fanfic.Becoming Female: The anti-sexist message would be a lot more effective if the characters didn't go around slut-shaming each other willy-nilly.
  • Film.Ernest Scared Stupid: "Of course! Showing unconditional love to kill your enemies! That's the ultimate weapon of destruction! Peace and love! What am I missing here?!" I'm not even sure what this is supposed to be other than quoting a joke, but it sure isn't a proper Broken Aesop.
  • Visual Novel.CLANNAD: People who dislike the Reset Button Ending of ~After Story~ generally think it undermines all of Tomoya's Character Development and the message that you should accept your losses and make the best of what you have. Complaining aside, this probably would fall under the "aware of the aesop and the problem, but doesn't directly connect the two", but even going through the rest of the article, I'm having trouble determining what exactly the Reset Button Ending of the work is and to what degree it would "undermine" the moral, so I'm counting this as a ZCE.
  • Web Video.Savage Oobi: The moral cards don't always match the plot of the videos.

    Unclassified Misuse/Other (8/52) 
  • One Side of the Story: * Danny Phantom, "Splitting Images": Monster of the Week (not really a monster, but who cares?) Poindexter believes Danny to be a bully after Danny dealt Dash (an actual bully) some much-needed humiliation, and, yep, won't even let Danny explain himself. Once the initial confrontation is over, it's just taken for granted that Danny apparently was wrong, in an Anvilicious "With great power Comes Great Responsibility" Aesop. One that he seems to forget on several occasions and has even has to visually re-learn within the first Made-for-TV Movie. Potholed for complaining and also incorrect — seems more like Aesop Amnesia.
  • Creator.Bo Burnham: The end of "Love Is..." has Bo bring up an anecdote about a company that sells rape whistles facing a dilemma produced from the fact that if they're successful in declining rape, they'll also see a decline in sales. The main take-away Bo extracts from that for the whole song?
    "Love is all about...whistles."
  • Teens Are Monsters: Never Been Kissed: Even though the film is mostly a comedy, the teenagers there are shown to be quite jerks; they stole Josie's car on her first day at the school and then watched on in delight while she tried to find it (and it was told to her that that wasn't the first time they did it), refused to sell a girl a prom ticket because she wasn't popular enough, tried to pour dog food on said girl at the prom and the boy that Josie was into (the student, not the teacher) deduced that she was a loser based on her bedroom. Oddly enough, in spite of this behavior towards her, she eventually was able to be accepted by the students and gleefully hung out with them. No explanation of an "aesop", just potholed at the end to complain.
  • Series.Victorious: In "Tori Gets Stuck", Tori can't star in Steamboat Suzie after giving three pints of blood and Jade, her understudy, is disqualified because of her actions during the episode. So Sikowitz is left as the only one capable of playing the lead role in a play about women being able to do anything men can do. I might be wrong on this due to the lack of context, but based on the way this is written, it seems more like a case of narrative irony for a joke, especially since the aesop in question appears to be limited to an in-universe play.
  • Video Game.Batman: The Telltale Series: In the final scene of Season 2, Alfred calls Bruce out on creating the villains that he has to fight, and Telltale clearly wants the player to be hit hard by it. The only problem is that in Telltale’s continuity, Batman is only responsible for the creation of Joker and Two-Face, and even then, not only is the level of responsibility is dependent on the player’s choices but most of them were caused by Bruce's actions, not Batman's. The wording of this is extremely confusing; if Bruce is indeed responsible for creating villains, he's responsible for creating villains, simple as that. What does player involvement have to do with this, and how does that contradict the point Alfred is making? As far as this entry is concerned, he's absolutely correct.
  • Web Animation.Human Kind Of: Despite Judy and Cory promising to treat each other as protagonists in the end of episode 9, the latter declares the former as her sidekick in the comic book she's working on. Not really an aesop; if it is, the entry didn't give this the appropriate context.
  • Web Video.Sequelitis: As discussed by Roahm Mythril here, Arin's argument in the Mega Man episode that the Hopeless Boss Fight against Vile in the intro stage is supposed to motivate the player to get stronger and defeat Vile falls apart considering what actually happens when facing Vile again - even with all weapons and upgrades, the player is still forced to lose until Zero blows up his Ride Armor and the player fights him on foot, giving off the impression that the player beats Vile not because they got stronger, but because he got weaker, making one wonder if X would've been able to beat Vile initially if he didn't have his Ride Armor. What's more, both times Vile's attacks can be dodged indefinitely, and Vile can be hit so many times that he should lose, but doesn't because the plot demands it. This is an unusual example since it's not a Broken Aesop in the context of a work itself, but rather an outside critic analyzing and delivering an take about a derivative work but is themselves called out as wrong in their analysis. This comes off more as Cowboy BeBop at His Computer.
  • Western Animation.Rated "A" for Awesome: In "Best Frenemies Forever," Les exposes Chet's music video as a fake, causing him to be laughed at and rejected by everyone else. In the end, Team Awesome is forced to restore Chet's popularity, and he returns to his Jerkass ways. The lesson seems to be "Don't expose the local rich jerk as a fake, because it's better for him to keep being a popular bully who looks down on everyone else and treats them like garbage." Unsure what the aesop being broken even is; reads more like Warp That Aesop than anything.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 5th 2024 at 1:17:10 PM

GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#1: Apr 14th 2023 at 6:29:07 PM

To-do list:

  • It was decided to define Broken Aesop as a work containing a lesson or viewpoint, but with the events within the work contradicting the presented lesson or viewpoint, as well as making it YMMV and allowing lessons/viewpoints that are contradicted by events that happened earlier in the work in addition to events that happened later.

    Original post 
Note: This thread was proposed by Number 9 Robotic.

Broken Aesop has been a problem trope for a while due to it being frequently misused and used as a front for complaining, which in turn is tied to what I believe are fundamental problems in how we perceive "aesops". This is being kept as a main page trope, despite the fact that it's inherently built around the analysis of analyzing a moral lesson behind a work (which is subjective interpretation) and then providing an explanation for why it's contradicted (which is also subjective interpretation). This is not a problem unique to this trope; many aesop tropes (most especially Clueless Aesop and Lost Aesop) similarly have issues rooted in revolving around several YMMV aspects, and the inherent requirement of being critical about a work in how its story is told has led to a lot of rampant editorializing, and in turn, complaining, especially in the forming of potholing to accentuate snarky entries, including in the main page. We already do categorize a few Aesop tropes as YMMV (including Accidental Aesop and Captain Obvious Aesop), which themselves also have issues of inviting bad-faith and need addressing elsewhere, but more relevant to here reflect on issues of what constitutes an "aesop" going bad to begin with.

We do have a big checklist on the main page as to what doesn't constitute a Broken Aesop by means of telling folks to back off of Ad Hominem-type complaints, but a big issue is more that some folks have very lax standards as to what an "aesop" actually is, conflating "a direct lesson the narrative has set up to convey" to "this is an implication I noticed and thought about in the story", and that seems to have been a gateway to leading to a ton of in-article preaching of problems they have with varying levels of quality. Not only that, but in a good chunk of cases of extrapolating an "aesop" then being critical about it, a not-insignificant number of wicks I've checked do not give adequate context for how the matter being complained about is directly the fault of the work itself, especially in the intended sense of "story's narrative unintentionally defying its message." Some of these takes have such a huge disconnect with the work and run on such bad faith that they border on being non-sequiturs.

My wick check for the trope is here, and here are my findings:

  • (4/52) (8%) of examples adequately describe the aesop and explains why it's "broken".
  • (4/52) (8%) describe the aesop and a related problem, but they're only occasionally interconnected.
  • (11/52) (21%) describe the aesop and a problem, but doesn't elaborate on a direct connection between the two (some of these are non-sequitur issues, and many are very loaded with derisive complaining).
  • (7/52) (13%) are complaints made based around things outside the work itself and/or in the metatext.
  • (6/52) (12%) of examples have justifying edits and Conversation in the Main Page discussing why the aesop is not broken.
  • (7/52) (13%) are examples of narratively intentional Broken Aesops (including in-universe discussion and spoofs).
  • (5/52) (10%) are ZCEs.
  • (8/52) (15%) are unclassified misuse, usually none of these are remotely "aesops" to begin with.

There's a lot of issues and I'm not entirely sure what the easy fix for this is. I don't believe the solution is merely to make Broken Aesop a YMMV trope; I think that if we want to avoid low-entry-level complaining and/or bad-faith analysis on the wiki from this trope, the standards of how we interpret what an "aesop" is on the site as a whole needs to be addressed.

Wick check:

    open/close all folders 

  • Adequately describes the aesop and explains why it's "broken": (4/52) (8%)
  • Describes the aesop and a related problem, but they're only occasionally interconnected: (4/52) (8%)
  • Describes the aesop and a problem, but doesn't elaborate on a direct connection between the two: (11/52) (21%)
  • Out-of-narrative and meta complaints: (7/52) (13%)
  • Justifying edits to discuss why it's NOT broken: (6/52) (12%)
  • Narratively intentional (including In-universe discussion or spoofs): (7/52) (13%)
  • ZCE: (5/52) (10%)
  • Unclassified Misuse/Other: (6/52) (15%)

    Adequately describes the aesop and explains why it's "broken" (4/52) 
  • Anime.KanColle: In episode 10, Fubuki is training harder and taking more risks than usual because she wants to be remodeled. As a result, she isn't getting enough sleep and nearly gets herself sunk by Abyssals during a scouting operation. Mutsuki urges her to take better care of herself, as she's not proving anything and will only hurt the people that care about her if she gets herself killed. Fubuki apologizes and realizes Mutsuki's right. Fast-forward to the end of the episode, when Fubuki engages in some live fire training with Akagi and Kaga and nearly gets herself killed...except now Mutsuki is actively cheering her on. On top of that, Fubuki gets her second remodel afterwards. This entry doesn't explicitly state that the aesop was broken vis-à-vis getting ignored, but it's close enough.
  • Anime.Speed Racer: Speed's loss to Hap Hazard is supposed to be a stab at putting your pride before others' feelings and Honor Before Reason attitudes, but it fumbles because 1. Hap Hazard proceeds to engage in serious Unsportsmanlike Gloating despite only winning on a technicality, and 2. Hap's sister seems to believe Speed intentionally threw the race for her, which he doesn't deny, so Speed ultimately still comes out with his honor and pride mostly intact.
  • Film.Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Batman's initially portrayed as having lost his way by developing into brutal, merciless killer. However, even after he has a Heel Realization, he's still shown indulging in the same kind of behavior that was previously portrayed negatively. The fact that Zach Snyder has made comments seemingly defending his killings only further muddies up the issue. This entry still very much needs context to prove its point instead of the meta complaining.
  • Video Game.Yakuza 6: The moral of the Baseball substory is that throwing boatloads of money into a cherry-picked all-star team will never beat a homegrown team with a true bond. However, the game not only allows you to, but recommends that you complete the substory by picking up all-star players from all over Japan, some of which are former major league players (such as Gorchov, Gori-san, Maetani, and Yoshida), and one of which only joins your team if you give him a million yen upfront. There's absolutely no reason to use players from the Setouchi Warriors' original lineup after you get all the gold players.

    Describes the aesop and a related problem, but they're only occasionally interconnected (4/52) 
  • Beauty And The Beast.Tropes A to D: The film's aesop "Don't be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within" is undermined by Monsieur D'Arque, the asylum master. The film's Love Interest and Big Bad—the Beast and Gaston, respectively—effectively deconstruct tropes commonly associated with their respective antithesis; the Beast looks Obviously Evil while Gaston looks like a Prince Charming, but their personalities sharply contrast with their appearances, especially after Beast is inspired to change his ways by Belle's kindness towards him. However, Monsieur D'Arque takes the Obviously Evil trope and plays it completely straight, as he looks like a walking corpse, has red eyes, and loves Gaston's manipulative plot to have Maurice thrown in the asylum unless Belle agrees to marry him, precisely because of how despicable it is. The side character does go against the moral, but the actual main focus the moral is built around (Beast and Gaston) are intact and played as intended.
  • Comic Book.Kick-Ass: The main point of the comic is essentially to be a deconstruction about why being a superhero is a completely idiotic idea in real life, with Dave being a massive This Loser Is You, while the book relies heavily on This Is Reality. Except for the story also features the impossibly badass Hit-Girl who, while presented as being not at all well-adjusted, still manages to do things no human could possibly do, and whose memetic badassery is encouraged. It undermines the 'superheroes are a stupid wish-fulfillment fantasy' when there's one who's pretty awesome and not depicted as a loser. The entry doesn't deny that Dave IS a loser though; if he is meant to be the audience surrogate and is treated as a loser, where does Hit-Girl's depiction factor into breaking it?
  • Film.Jurassic World Dominion: Although the movie's closing message is that humans, animals, and dinosaurs will have to live together after dinosaurs been unleashed back into the world by super-science, the key focus of the plot preceding this goes against this idea. Specifically, the movie pushes that the only way to save everyone from starving to death is to drive a resurrected species of giant locusts that Biosyn has unleashed to extinction, which is about as far removed from a message of peaceful coexistence as you could get — even if said locusts were genetically geared to be a threat to all others. The issue with this entry is that it assumes the film absolutely locked in its final moral at the start of the film, not approaching it as a narrative where people changed their minds due to changing circumstances as the plot moved forward (including those threatening locusts listed at the very end).
  • Video Game.Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom: During the game's development, Samir Rebib claimed that "there is no such thing as good and evil in Shiness", but this is strongly undermined in the final game, in which Zagrom is shown to have destroyed Meos's kingdom apparently for no other reason than he could. The mere fact that the dark shi exists contradicts this aesop, as everything people under its influence are shown to do is unambiguously evil, though it's unclear as to whether Zagrom was actually under its influence or just already evil before being exposed to it. Even Ayron, whose Last Words before he falls from Mantara, "the Shiness will submit you to the same suffering as me", somewhat imply him to actually be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, is needlessly cruel and willing to kill his minions for petty reasons as Crossroad shows. This almost made it to the "fully adequate explanation" tier, but that last part I feel indirectly works against its own argument. If someone is coded as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, wouldn't that fit more in the framing of gray morality than an out-and-out villain?

    Describes the aesop and a problem, but doesn't elaborate on a direct connection between the two (11/52) 
  • Animation.Three Bogatyrs: The film tries to tell that marriage requires mutual trust and independance, and the Stay in the Kitchen approach is detrimental to everyone. Still, Bogatyrs' wives end up as Damsels in Distress again and forive their husbands for leaving them alone. An anti-Stay in the Kitchen moral directly implies misogyny, but being put in danger and forgiving your husbands is not inherently misogynistic.
  • Animation.Upin & Ipin: "Gelapnya" has two of those. The first one, "Don't waste electricity", is broken since the light turns off because of a storm, not because Upin and Ipin wasting electricity throughout the episode. Upin and Ipin wasting electricity leads to nothing since Opah somehow managed to pay the expensive bill. The second one, "Do your homework early", is undermined by the fact that Upin and Ipin didn't do their homework early yet still mananged to do it anyway. Almost a ZCE since the description of the narrative is confusing and a bit inconsistent (in what way are they wasting electricity?)
  • Anime.Pokémon: The First Movie: It's a downplayed case. The dub version's "Fighting Is Wrong" message sounds strange in a series about using Pokémon to fight other Pokémon, but there's a fine distinction. In this movie, the clones and originals have a fight to the death while the rest of the series is supposed to be a friendly sport...albeit one that Pokémon are implied to sometimes die during. Kind of iffy in that the entry tries to explain why the aesop both is and isn't broken, while not entirely elaborating on the context that would lead it to be a "downplayed" example anyway.
  • Comic Book.Transformers (2019): The third Galaxies arc, "Gauging the Truth", centers around Gauge standing up for herself by deciding whether she should help the Reversionists or Arcee and Greenlight. However, this falls flat as the choice she need to make is to choose her loving mentors or a manipulative cult led by the abusive, uncaring Heretech who wants to destroy Cybertron in an attempt to force the populace to convert to his religion.
  • Film.North: The film's message is ostensibly about the value of family and accepting one's parents. There was also "home is where the heart is." It does nothing to convince the audience that North had any real world logic in going back to them.
    • How does what happens in a child's dream count as a compelling message? Those stereotypes presumably aren't prevalent in universe, so it fails show that there are far worse parents out there, which should be a relatively easy task. Even ignoring the Justifying Edit just to complain about the meta storytelling, this description of what the problem is is incredibly vague and devoid of context.
  • Film.Superman IV: The Quest for Peace: Nuclear Man, a villain meant to personify everything bad about all things related to nuclear fission, is powered by solar power of all things. While this is scientifically plausible (as the sun is basically a giant fusion bomb), it still seems silly for the villain in a Green Aesop story to be powered by one of the most environmentally friendly power sources known to man. This reads more like a Lost Aesop; there's nothing inherently contradictory in the narrative/framing of subject matter, it seems the narrative itself just isn't told very well.
  • Series.Girls: After being involved in a semi-adulterous situation, Jessa is told "You're doing it to distract yourself from becoming the person you're supposed to be." Jessa plunges into commitment by marrying Thomas-John, a guy she's barely known and who had one cameo on the show until their wedding. Because nothing says committed like a Vegas style wedding. What does commitment or a lack thereof have to do with Jessa's point?
  • Series.Romeo: During the scene from "Da New Hotness", in which Romeo's older sister got a boyfriend. She is lectured on how she is not mature enough for a relationship. Later, when the boyfriend comes over for dinner, he eats some Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce and reacts hilariously. The sister dumps him and it's presented as her being "mature." However, what would be truly mature is not breaking up with your boyfriend over something so minor. It's only "broken" based on a very YMMV assessment.
  • The Sinking City: Much of the game deals with the evils of racism (the KKK are sidequest villains) and the plight of the Innsmouth refugees. Every figure who engages in xenophobia is treated with disgust and Reed's dialogue always makes his low opinion of xenophobes clear. However, the Innsmouthers are followers of a Religion of Evil and heavily involved in the city's organized crime. Given the Deep Ones are historically villains in Cthulhu Mythos fiction, it also will confuse longtime fans of the setting. The Esoteric Order of Dagon is established as the "real" evil among the Innsmouthers but almost all of them are involved with it or at least sympathetic. It doesn't help that no matter how nice Reed is to the Innsmouthers, they will attempt to kill him multiple times. Just because both sides are evil doesn't necessarily mean that "racism is bad" is invalidated or contradicted, it just means the setting is an Evil Versus Evil plot.
  • Western Animation.Nate Is Late: "The Mermaid" episode tries to go for a Green Aesop about protecting the environment. Good enough reasoning but yet it also seems to portray humans solely in the wrong for dumping trash in the lake when the mermaids themselves never tried to contact the humans or make an effort to clean the lake themselves. Instead simply blaming Nate (who mind you told them multiple times it was an accident and wasn't trying to dump trash in the water) and forcing him to deal with the trash monster, which, ironically, took efforts from both sides to defeat. Yet the show still went with "Humans need to clean up their mess" with Nate accepting the blame for something that wasn't even in his control while the mermaids get off scot-free from their own responsibility to their home. Nothing about Nate being the scapegoat that has to learn the lesson directly contradicts the overall message at the start. This entry assumes that the mermaids are even capable of fixing the environment on their own and have the ability to "contact the humans" (like, all of them?); it's possible that those things were out of the realm of narrative possibility, but the entry doesn't prove why that isn't the case.
  • Western Animation.Maryoku Yummy: "Flip, Flop, and Float" has Maryoku getting ill and keeps trying to help her friends but only makes things worse and only gets sicker. The moral says that "when you're sick, stay in bed", but the reason why Fij and Ooka wouldn't tell the truth to Maryoku was that they did not want to offend her. So it unintentionally states that it's fine to hurt someone's feelings if it's real important. The initial moral itself is unaddressed even with the addition of a separate different, more cynical moral, which is not what a Broken Aesop covers.

    Out-of-narrative and meta complaints (7/52) 
  • Animation.Doby & Disy: On a meta-level; the entire idea that Caesar is there to teach children not to steal becomes pointless when you consider that the series started out as a mockbuster of Dora the Explorer, with Caesar himself being an expy of Swiper.
  • Comic Book.Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): According to Ken Penders, the intended message of Knuckles and Locke's subplot was that sometimes, even a loving parent can do bad things to their kid while meaning well; reportedly, Penders based it on his own relationship with his father. The trouble is, while this was meant to show that a relationship with a parent can be complex and fraught with difficulty, that doesn't describe how Penders wrote Locke and Knuckles at all—Knuckles bears no grudge whatsoever on Locke the moment he explains himself, and in an issue focusing on Locke's death in the future, Knuckles has nothing but good things to say about him. This causes the moral to instead look a lot more like "your parents always mean best for you, and that justifies anything they might do." Not only is this entry inappropriately complain-y and seems personally targeted towards its author, it sounds like the moral being broken here necessitates knowledge outside of the work and narrative itself.
  • Fanfic.Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles: One of the messages the author desperately tries to hammer in during the author's notes is that sorcery and witchcraft are bad, and that's why she's rewriting the story. That said, the prayers that make food appear and perform actions around the school are much more akin to magic rather than religious faith, and God is treated as a magic wand who conjures whatever they need by just praying for it. People who dislike the moral will point out how they're just using sorcery with a religious coat of paint over it, and those who like the moral will be able to testify that praying does not magically fill a table with cooked bacon. Based on the way this entry is written, the moral being broken here necessitates knowledge outside of the work and narrative itself.
  • Film.Buddy: The message about the dangers of keeping wild animals as pets is broken because the two pet chimps, who unlike Buddy get to stay, are portrayed as peaceful. In reality, chimps are actually more destructive than gorillas despite being smaller and weaker.
  • Film.It's Alive: The killer babies aren't to blame for their condition, but the theme of innocence must be protected loses its meaning when you consider that the babies are still extremely dangerous and unpredictable on the same level as a rabid or otherwise dangerous dog which have to be put down for the good and safety of everyone around them.
  • Tabletop Game.Racial Holy War: The White Race is superior! Except... if so, how come it needs saving? Why do all the other races have hilariously broken racial abilities but not the Whites? Seriously, Asians get extra attacks (up to 5) in melee (despite supposedly learning them from watching "fake martial arts movies"), Latinos almost always win initiative (despite being depicted as lazy), black people have powerful debuffs and Jews can bribe your character to skip their turn with no save (and since you don't get any money after being bribed this way, one has to assume that you decided to do this on the mere promise of cash, which really makes it no surprise that white people are endangered). White people on the other hand, are just people. Unless you count the inexplicable ability of some (who took the Holy Books skill) to heal others by reading from Nature's Eternal Religion or the White Man's Bible. All in all, it seem to unintentionally perfectly encapsulate one of Umberto Eco's observations on the ideology of fascism, namely that through constantly shifting rhetoric the fascists portray their (perceived) enemies as a bunch of weaklings that can easily be vanquished one moment, only to then claim that they are an overwhelming and powerful existential threat the next. Kind of a strange example since this is a tabletop game whose morals appear to be described through its gameplay than its plot (although the description of this makes it vague). In the end though, this entry is very much just a pedestal to make fun of and complain about the design and politics of this game.
  • WebVideo.Demo Reel: After the result of The Review Must Go On, Blue Patches's message of "you can't let your past consume you and you need to be excited for the future" is more than a touch awkward. Comes off more as a meta-based example of Harsher in Hindsight.
    • It also breaks the whole "Critic is evolved enough to make his own choices" message of To Boldly Flee. His decision to make his life better and change was explained and completely his own, and turning it into a paradox that he didn't understand makes him ironically bend to the whims of the real writer. This bullet point does fall in the "understands the aesop and a problem" category, but even going by how it's written, it also has very little to do with Demo Reel as its own work, and the breaking was still inflicted retroactively from decisions outside of its production.

    Justifying edits to discuss why it's NOT broken (6/52) 
  • Anime.Shadowverse: Hiiro's matches with Lucia and Shiro, who are very motivated to win at any cost, have him deliver a point that one shouldn't prioritize winning at the cost of enjoyment, but this message rings hollow when he's an Invincible Hero and hasn't lost a game on-screen. Downplayed, in that Hiiro himself plays for the love of the game and tries to have fun, regardless of the outcome. Even without the Justifying Edit, the description for why the aesop was "broken" to begin with is really vague.
  • Comic Book.One More Day: Breaks the aesop that Spider-Man is supposed to embody, as instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he dodges it by making a Deal with the Devil against the wishes of its main beneficiary and guilt-tripping his own wife into going along with it. However, in One Moment in Time, this is retconned so that Mary Jane is the one to have made the deal. For readers, rewriting history just to save the life of a single person who, in addition to wanting to die anyways and was telling you to let go, and is, let's face it, likely to die of old age in a few years anyway is simply asinine. The message then becomes "the ends justify the means", and that instead of learning how to cope with loss and move on with your life, you should hold on to what you have and never let go, even if the cost of doing so might be too high; for you and others.
  • Series.Mythbusters: Played straight and subverted. In the Viral Videos episode, they warned that the viewers shouldn't believe every video they see online... yet all four of the videos tested were Confirmed. However, they did make their own example involving Rubik's cubes, in order to show how someone could easily fake an online video. "Played straight and subverted"?
    • They would later bust other videos, such as the giant lego ball video.
  • Western Animation.Plan Bee: While film teaches the value of democracy, and yet the heroes fight to restore the old monarch.
    • Averted in that the film advocates constitutional monarchy over absolute monarchy.
  • Fanfic.The Karma of Lies: Potentially. The story revolves around the concept that evil wins when good people do nothing — Lila did incredible damage thanks to Adrien's refusal to act against her. However, part of Marinette's Karmic Jackpot stems from her opting to cut ties with him and the rest of her ungrateful classmates, which includes no longer going out of her way to oppose Lila. While probably good for her mental health, this could also be interpreted as "Oppose evil, but not when evil heaps consequences upon the complicit."
  • Film.A Serbian Film: Complaints of disturbing content aside, one of the most frequent criticisms of the film is that its supposed commentary on life in post-war Serbia doesn't come across very well, at least for non-Serbs. Not only are Miloš and his family shown to be living in a rather large and ostentatious home which is pretty at odds with their supposed financial hardshipsnote , but the portrayal of Vukmir and his snuff film crew as a supposed allegory for government corruption in Serbia (with Miloš and his family representing the civilians abused under the system) is rather abstract and too much of a worst-case scenario for most non-Serbs to take seriously. The premise hit a little closer to home—both metaphorically and literally—in the film's own native Serbia (where the collapse of the socialist welfare state and numerous war crime convictions left the majority of government staff broke, forcing several of the country's most impoverished citizens into the sex industry as a means of income), though even there, it is still very much dependent on the viewer already harboring a great deal of resentment towards its government and the means to which many Serbs must resort in order to make ends meet in a post-war society. Also a really loaded filibuster on the quality of the film.

    Narratively intentional (including In-universe discussion or spoofs) (7/52) 
  • Fanfic.100 Percent Hero: Discussed In-Universe. While talking with Toshinori about how Stain was motivated to inspire change in hero society but failed to do so, Shigeo questions if his philosophies about not thinking highly of quirks are able to get through to his peers because he's already considered the fairest of them all. His adopted father somberly remarks that those with great power have a higher chance of having their beliefs known and accepted to the world compared to those with little to no power.
  • Film.Gone Girl: Amy's "cool girl" monologue about being true to yourself is undermined by the fact that she seems as honest with Nick in her flashbacks as she's ever with anyone. Therefore, her anger seems misplaced. Likewise, Amy is incredibly unhappy when she's left to be herself and quickly falls into old patterns in order to make friends. Not to mention that one woman in a car that she focuses on as a "Cool Girl" turns out to be sitting next to another woman, not a man. It undermines Amy's point that women only act in certain ways to draw male attention, as opposed to simply being the way humans act for each other. Of course, given that Amy is a sociopath with narcissistic traits, the Aesop-breaking is likely deliberate. Also very much reads of a last-second Justifying Edit.
  • Film.Men in Black 3: Played for laughs with the cops that pull J over in 1969. I'm not sure this actually counts for the trope, even as an in-universe Played for Laughs example.
    J: Just because you see a black man driving a nice car does not mean it's stolen! [Beat] A'ight, I stole this one, but not because I'm black!
  • BioShock: In-Universe, much of the story is spent exploring how Andrew Ryan's Objectivist beliefs have eventually descended into selfishness, arrogance, and hypocrisy of the kind that he so despises in the outside world. Nothing says this better than banning religion in your city but still naming it after the Biblical Rapture. Though this could use some meat on explaining what more about Ryan's philosophies are being contradicted.
  • Mario Adventures: "Today kids, we learned that you should forgive your friends and family, no matter what. And only chase them over hell's half acre with a knife over something really important, or in my case, stupid. All in all, the moral is: A penny shaved is a penny earned... Good night kids!" Even though there isn't any context and it isn't potholed as such, this reads as an intentional Spoof Aesop.
  • WesternAnimation.Bluey: Lampshaded in 'The Claw.' Bandit says he's teaching the girls a valuable lesson about money by making their pretend claw game more realistic by demanding the girls get real coins from doing housework. When he puts in a block that would grant them as much ice cream as they want, his claw machine conveniently breaks down. He attempts to explain to the girls that this is how the world works, only to be interrupted by them tickling him. As the girls chow down on their well-deserved ice cream, Chilli asks if they learned anything today, to which they both say "nope!"
  • WesternAnimation.Chaotic: The show often does this, often with the target of the moral either not getting the lesson, the lesson is undermined, or another person blatantly breaking the moral of the episode towards the end. This first bulk is a ZCE.
    • It's outright parodied in "Battledrome of the Sexes". The entire episode, when paired with Sarah's story with Intress appears to be about how women are just as capable if not better than men, until it's revealed Peyton was only playing female creatures and Krystella was only playing male creatures. They argue amongst themselves if this means that since Krystella lost that it proves boys are better than girls, or if because Peyton won specifically using female creatures, that girls are better than boys. The episode ends with Kaz, Tom, and Sarah silently wondering what moral they're supposed to take from it.

    ZCE (5/52) 
  • Comic Book.Condorito: Oh, where to begin? Always played for laughs, though.
  • Fanfic.Becoming Female: The anti-sexist message would be a lot more effective if the characters didn't go around slut-shaming each other willy-nilly.
  • Film.Ernest Scared Stupid: "Of course! Showing unconditional love to kill your enemies! That's the ultimate weapon of destruction! Peace and love! What am I missing here?!" I'm not even sure what this is supposed to be other than quoting a joke, but it sure isn't a proper Broken Aesop.
  • Visual Novel.CLANNAD: People who dislike the Reset Button Ending of ~After Story~ generally think it undermines all of Tomoya's Character Development and the message that you should accept your losses and make the best of what you have. Complaining aside, this probably would fall under the "aware of the aesop and the problem, but doesn't directly connect the two", but even going through the rest of the article, I'm having trouble determining what exactly the Reset Button Ending of the work is and to what degree it would "undermine" the moral, so I'm counting this as a ZCE.
  • Web Video.Savage Oobi: The moral cards don't always match the plot of the videos.

    Unclassified Misuse/Other (8/52) 
  • One Side of the Story: * Danny Phantom, "Splitting Images": Monster of the Week (not really a monster, but who cares?) Poindexter believes Danny to be a bully after Danny dealt Dash (an actual bully) some much-needed humiliation, and, yep, won't even let Danny explain himself. Once the initial confrontation is over, it's just taken for granted that Danny apparently was wrong, in an Anvilicious "With great power Comes Great Responsibility" Aesop. One that he seems to forget on several occasions and has even has to visually re-learn within the first Made-for-TV Movie. Potholed for complaining and also incorrect — seems more like Aesop Amnesia.
  • Creator.Bo Burnham: The end of "Love Is..." has Bo bring up an anecdote about a company that sells rape whistles facing a dilemma produced from the fact that if they're successful in declining rape, they'll also see a decline in sales. The main take-away Bo extracts from that for the whole song?
    "Love is all about...whistles."
  • Teens Are Monsters: Never Been Kissed: Even though the film is mostly a comedy, the teenagers there are shown to be quite jerks; they stole Josie's car on her first day at the school and then watched on in delight while she tried to find it (and it was told to her that that wasn't the first time they did it), refused to sell a girl a prom ticket because she wasn't popular enough, tried to pour dog food on said girl at the prom and the boy that Josie was into (the student, not the teacher) deduced that she was a loser based on her bedroom. Oddly enough, in spite of this behavior towards her, she eventually was able to be accepted by the students and gleefully hung out with them. No explanation of an "aesop", just potholed at the end to complain.
  • Series.Victorious: In "Tori Gets Stuck", Tori can't star in Steamboat Suzie after giving three pints of blood and Jade, her understudy, is disqualified because of her actions during the episode. So Sikowitz is left as the only one capable of playing the lead role in a play about women being able to do anything men can do. I might be wrong on this due to the lack of context, but based on the way this is written, it seems more like a case of narrative irony for a joke, especially since the aesop in question appears to be limited to an in-universe play.
  • Video Game.Batman: The Telltale Series: In the final scene of Season 2, Alfred calls Bruce out on creating the villains that he has to fight, and Telltale clearly wants the player to be hit hard by it. The only problem is that in Telltale’s continuity, Batman is only responsible for the creation of Joker and Two-Face, and even then, not only is the level of responsibility is dependent on the player’s choices but most of them were caused by Bruce's actions, not Batman's. The wording of this is extremely confusing; if Bruce is indeed responsible for creating villains, he's responsible for creating villains, simple as that. What does player involvement have to do with this, and how does that contradict the point Alfred is making? As far as this entry is concerned, he's absolutely correct.
  • Web Animation.Human Kind Of: Despite Judy and Cory promising to treat each other as protagonists in the end of episode 9, the latter declares the former as her sidekick in the comic book she's working on. Not really an aesop; if it is, the entry didn't give this the appropriate context.
  • Web Video.Sequelitis: As discussed by Roahm Mythril here, Arin's argument in the Mega Man episode that the Hopeless Boss Fight against Vile in the intro stage is supposed to motivate the player to get stronger and defeat Vile falls apart considering what actually happens when facing Vile again - even with all weapons and upgrades, the player is still forced to lose until Zero blows up his Ride Armor and the player fights him on foot, giving off the impression that the player beats Vile not because they got stronger, but because he got weaker, making one wonder if X would've been able to beat Vile initially if he didn't have his Ride Armor. What's more, both times Vile's attacks can be dodged indefinitely, and Vile can be hit so many times that he should lose, but doesn't because the plot demands it. This is an unusual example since it's not a Broken Aesop in the context of a work itself, but rather an outside critic analyzing and delivering an take about a derivative work but is themselves called out as wrong in their analysis. This comes off more as Cowboy BeBop at His Computer.
  • Western Animation.Rated "A" for Awesome: In "Best Frenemies Forever," Les exposes Chet's music video as a fake, causing him to be laughed at and rejected by everyone else. In the end, Team Awesome is forced to restore Chet's popularity, and he returns to his Jerkass ways. The lesson seems to be "Don't expose the local rich jerk as a fake, because it's better for him to keep being a popular bully who looks down on everyone else and treats them like garbage." Unsure what the aesop being broken even is; reads more like Warp That Aesop than anything.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 5th 2024 at 1:17:10 PM

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number9robotic (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#3: Apr 14th 2023 at 6:48:18 PM

Present! Apologies if the main body of this is especially bulky, but in general the discussion I wanna highlight is one regarding the standards on what "An Aesop" is, Broken Aesop and Clueless Aesop are just particular examples where the nebulous nature of "the moral the story is trying to convey" leads way to a lot of being overly critical.

I'd say we need to be more strict in defining that paradigm to avoid it coming down to "a narrative implication I've assessed coming from the work" (I recently read through a load of SpongeBob SquarePants pages and I swear, most of the An Aesop entries were added just because the writer(s) had a personal quota to meet), but moral messages can be vague and tricky to define, so I'm not sure where to draw the line in the sand. I don't think the former Unfortunate Implications method of citation requirements will work considering its own problems (namely no way to enforce the quality of citations), but I also can't think of a hardline in-text method of "confirming" an aesop within the fiction that appropriately applies to all works that do have something to say. Any thoughts on that?

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 14th 2023 at 6:49:53 AM

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#4: Apr 14th 2023 at 6:51:41 PM

I mean, I fully agree that there's a lot of confusion over what, exactly, counts as An Aesop. I'm behind you. 100%

However, I don't think trying to solve such a massive issue on a TRS thread like this is the right way to go. This isn't a definition issue. It's a cultural issue. It's people seeing every work as having An Aesop even if it doesn't, less about the actual definition of the term. Fixing an entire mess like that would be like trying to tackle the entire Appearance Tropes ZCE epidemic on a thread about Pimped-Out Dress.

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BlackMage43 Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
#5: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:24:26 PM

My thoughts are to either:

1. Make this a YMMV trope and make a clean-up thread to separate the complaining / misuse from the actual examples.

2. Make this an In-Universe Examples Only trope.

number9robotic (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#6: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:28:37 PM

[up][up]At the very least, Broken Aesop needs to be YMMV for the inherent concerns of subjectivity as mentioned above. I still do think there's a relevant discussion to be had on the nature of what An Aesop "is" if we do insist on having a trope that's "An Aesop that fails", because also as mentioned (and detailed in the wick check), there are many examples where the complaints don't even meet the standard of being relevant to whatever in-fiction morals are "broken" to begin with, and that alone enables ranting about whatever hang-ups the tropers have with the work, using any big-to-marginal preexisting flaws they find as a springboard.

Maybe what we simply need is a cleanup based on relevance-to-complaint as a barometer, but that's still very much a subjective thing and I'm certainly not gonna be the sole arbiter of that.

[up]I don't think In-Universe Examples Only is the way to go because an in-universe broken moral just reads to me as simple in-narrative hypocrisy, and we already have a full index on Hypocrites.

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 14th 2023 at 7:31:27 AM

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#7: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:34:53 PM

Oh, I have always agreed this needed to be YMMV! I just think you're biting off more than we can chew with the general Aesop stuff.

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nrjxll Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Not war
#8: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:35:00 PM

there are many examples where the complaints don't even meet the standard of being relevant to whatever in-fiction morals are "broken" to begin with, and that alone enables ranting about whatever hang-ups the tropers have with the work, using any big-to-marginal preexisting flaws they find as a springboard

I mean, if that's the case (and I agree that it is), isn't making it YMMV just going to enable that behavior even more?

WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#9: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:36:44 PM

I mean, maybe... but it's also just the right thing to do. This isn't objective. You can't have examples without subjectively leaking into it. Keeping it as a trope won't help in any way.

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GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
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#10: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:38:23 PM

I wonder if we should send Broken Aesop and Clueless Aesop (the latter of which has a pending Queue listing) to Trope Talk and close this thread while dropping or delaying the pending Clueless Aesop thread.

Alternatively, just send An Aesop cleanup to Projects, still dropping both this thread and the pending Clueless Aesop thread in that case.

I guess we could make Broken Aesop YMMV (since it's clearly subjective) and then send everything to a Projects thread for Aesop tropes later, and tackle Clueless Aesop later (possibly putting its thread on hold until this one has been finalized).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 9:40:38 AM

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number9robotic (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#11: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:40:28 PM

[up][up][up] Yep, that's the worry, haha — I feel the fact analyzing morals is a difficult cultural issue makes the need to get a better grip on the exact terms of what a Broken Aesop is more than what it isn't more pertinent. If we don't, it could devolve into just being a potential Flame Bait trope fast.

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 14th 2023 at 7:40:54 AM

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GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
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#12: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:41:45 PM

What would be our options here other than making it YMMV? I'm not sure if IUEO work because that would require in-universe acknowledgement. Do any examples in the wick check have in-universe acknowledgement? We can't make this IUEO if there aren't already any examples like that.

Edit: OK, if we need to get a better grip on what this is... we should take this to Trope Talk and close this thread. TRS is not for hashing out definitions. Trope Talk is.

If someone could make a Trope Talk thread, I'll close this thread and put the Clueless Aesop thread in the Queue on hold. We need to hash out the clarity issues before deciding on a course of action.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 9:43:19 AM

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#13: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:44:29 PM

It already has a trope talk thread, technically.

See, I don't know if there's actually a debate on what Broken Aesop is; the issue is more that people don't know what An Aesop is.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 14th 2023 at 10:45:11 AM

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#14: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:44:48 PM

Edit: Retracted.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 9:46:29 AM

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number9robotic (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#15: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:46:32 PM

Sounds about right! I have no problems waiting for Clueless Aesop discussion to be put on hold, though assuming whatever goes down in Trope Talk regarding "An Aesop" discussion doesn't immediately make such discussion redundant, I still think it needs repairs for attracting complaining and cheap potholes.

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#16: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:47:20 PM

OK, I retracted the move to the Broken Aesop Trope Talk thread, but this thread still can't proceed without a Trope Talk thread on An Aesop. Please make one because hashing out definitions isn't something TRS is suitable for.

We can bring this thread back from the Morgue once the definition is sorted out, if this is still determined to be TRS-worthy.

Edit: Marked Clueless Aesop's thread as being on hold.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 9:50:08 AM

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#17: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:49:24 PM

But what about the YMMV stuff? That has nothing to do with the aesop confusion, that's just a straight up "this trope is actually subjective" issue.

This is why my ideal idea is to have a Trope Talk thread about An Aesop and to just go ahead with the YMMV move — because ultimately those are two separate things. And it's why from the beginning I was arguing that the aesop stuff was too much to worry about on this thread.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 14th 2023 at 10:50:47 AM

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#18: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:51:16 PM

How will we know what to keep and what to get rid of during a YMMV move if we don't know what the definition is? I'm against moving this to YMMV without us knowing what counts as a good example.

As mentioned in the OP, the main issue is usage, not subjectivity.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 9:53:18 AM

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#19: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:55:19 PM

Well, the wick check didn't check for subjectivity, so it's kinda weird either way. (The check is very thorough and was done very well! It's just that subjectivity wasn't part of the categorization. It was a misuse check first and foremost)

Like I said, the big issue is less that people don't know what Broken Aesop means, it's that An Aesop itself has been misused and nobody knows what aesops are. But that doesn't mean the actual definition of Broken Aesop is being contested, people mostly just disagree on how objective it is.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 14th 2023 at 10:55:46 AM

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#20: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:55:45 PM

Which is still a job for Trope Talk and not TRS.

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#21: Apr 14th 2023 at 7:57:16 PM

I don't disagree that we need a Trope Talk, Gaston. All I disagree about is that these two issues are the same.

One is a cultural issue that leads to misuse, but affects far more than Broken Aesop.

If you're saying that we also need a TRS to hash out the YMMV issue, fine, but that's not the exact same topic. Broken Aesop's definition isn't the thing in question necessarily — people just don't know what aesops are, so they're putting the wrong things into it. But that has nothing to do with whether or not it's YMMV.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 14th 2023 at 10:58:16 AM

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#22: Apr 14th 2023 at 8:02:07 PM

As I said, how will we know what to keep and what to get rid of if we make this YMMV without hashing out what counts as a good example? This sounds like a proposal to do things in the wrong order.

I never said the issues are the same. I said they both need Trope Talk.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 10:03:10 AM

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WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#23: Apr 14th 2023 at 8:04:26 PM

Oh, well if it's just an issue of "how do we clean it up afterwards" then that I understand. I thought you were trying to argue that Broken Aesop also had definition issues to hash out, which isn't technically true, and that's the bugbear I got stuck on.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 14th 2023 at 11:05:15 AM

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#24: Apr 14th 2023 at 8:04:47 PM

I'm going to clock this instead of closing to give the thread a chance to explain how or if we can handle this without Trope Talk.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2023 at 10:04:57 AM

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number9robotic (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#25: Apr 14th 2023 at 8:04:51 PM

I don't really know how to prove the wicks in question aren't subjective — Broken Aesop is entirely reliant on an analysis that is itself separate in philosophy from a work and the lesson the work conveys, and as such can no longer be an "objective" aspect of the work itself. In-fiction/narrative examples of moral hypocrisy are merely narrative hypocrisy (again, see the Hypocrite index), Broken Aesop very specifically takes a stance on meta analysis that goes beyond describing the work as it literally is, and more at what an audience believes it fails at.

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Trope Repair Shop: Broken Aesop
6th Jan '24 8:32:58 AM

Crown Description:

There are concerns that Broken Aesop's definition is unclear, and that it's subjective despite not being marked as YMMV. What should be done with it? Options are not mutually exclusive.

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