Accidental Aesop: Difference between revisions

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When a writer intends to simply write a piece of fiction without [[An Aesop]] but someone [[Misaimed Fandom|reads something into their work that they didn't intend]]. This can also happen when the creator did intend [[An Aesop]], but the one people pick up is completely off tack from the one they intended.

This seems to stem from some people always assuming [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]], which leads to them gasping "[[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]" when you tell them as such. This also generally requires the [[Word of God]] to clear things ~~up -- if~~, indeed, even that helps; don't count on it.

This seems to stem from some people always assuming [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]], which leads to them gasping "[[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]]" when you tell them as such. This also generally requires the [[Word of God]] to clear things up—if, indeed, even that helps; don't count on it.

Like [[Misaimed Fandom]] (where readers fail to catch the moral or satire intended by an author), an [[Accidental Aesop]] may result from poor authorial communication or, indeed, the [[Unfortunate Implications]] that come with poor use of common symbols.

Like [[Misaimed Fandom]] (where readers fail to catch the moral or satire intended by an author), an '''Accidental Aesop''' may result from poor authorial communication or, indeed, the [[Unfortunate Implications]] that come with poor use of common symbols.

See also: [[An Aesop]], [[Broken Aesop]], [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]], [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?]], and [[Death of the Author]]. Occasionally these unintended Aesops have [[Unfortunate Implications]]. However, [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]; just because a text wasn't ''intended'' to be a commentary doesn't mean it can't work perfectly well as one.

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== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* Charles M. Schulz's ''[[Peanuts]]'', due to its popularity and long run, often ran into this [[Trope]]:

** Schulz said he only created the [[It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown|Great Pumpkin]] as a fun idea: "What if someone believed in a Hallowe'en Santa Claus?" Many saw Linus's efforts as a mockery of the foolishness of religious people, but Schulz himself was quite religious, at least in the early years. <ref> (Around the 1980's Schulz started describing himself as a "secular humanist" and admitted he didn't go to church anymore, but The Great Pumpkin was introduced in 1960.)</ref> Linus's statement that you should never discuss "religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin" was intended to show that he doesn't view the Great Pumpkin as his religion per se.

** Schulz said he only created the [[It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown|Great Pumpkin]] as a fun idea: "What if someone believed in a Hallowe'en Santa Claus?" Many saw Linus's efforts as a mockery of the foolishness of religious people, but Schulz himself was quite religious, at least in the early years.<ref>(Around the 1980's Schulz started describing himself as a "secular humanist" and admitted he didn't go to church anymore, but The Great Pumpkin was introduced in 1960.)</ref> Linus's statement that you should never discuss "religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin" was intended to show that he doesn't view the Great Pumpkin as his religion per se.

** There's a strip where Linus asks Lucy about what would happen if a baby was in heaven waiting to be born but its parents decided that they didn't want any more children. Lucy points out his theological and scientific ignorance. It was meant to be a parody of people who ask really weird hypothetical questions, but people on both sides of the abortion debate seized on it as proof that Schulz supported them and asked him if they could have permission to reprint it in their literature. He said no.

** In an anthology, 1960s letters written to Schulz about his new African-American character Franklin are reprinted; because he was introduced during the [[Civil Rights Movement]], people assumed Schulz was trying to make some sort of statement. No, he said. Franklin's just black by coincidence.

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== [[Video Games]] ==

* The racist FPS ''[[Ethnic Cleansing]]'', as well as its [[Spiritual Successor~~|Spiritual Successors~~]] ''White Law'' and ''ZOG's Nightmare'', were made by a white supremacist record label in order to convert young white gamers to its cause. Those few people who played the games mostly went away thinking that, the next time they hear white supremacists claiming that they oppose violence, they will treat such comments with a fair bit of skepticism.

* The racist FPS ''[[Ethnic Cleansing]]'', as well as its [[Spiritual Successor]]s ''White Law'' and ''ZOG's Nightmare'', were made by a white supremacist record label in order to convert young white gamers to its cause. Those few people who played the games mostly went away thinking that, the next time they hear white supremacists claiming that they oppose violence, they will treat such comments with a fair bit of skepticism.

** Alternatively: if these are the best games that the racists can come up with, then they clearly have no idea what they are doing, and shouldn't even be trusted to run a newspaper route.

* [[Word of God]] is that the Aesop of ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' is that humans cannot live up to their ideals and thus any attempt to realize [[Utopia]] will fail. However, the first game was seen as an attack on [[Ayn Rand]] and the philosophy of [[Objectivism]]. This was unintentional; Ken Levine is a libertarian who sympathizes with Objectivism even if he has his disagreements with it. Since the release of the sequel (which attacked collectivism), the intended aesop has become much clearer.

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** YMMV, since the player's own architecture may well be just as grand. . .

*** Because the game is just THAT open ended, it's very possible that quite a few accidental Aesops my just pop up at any time. Another easy one could be that creepers are taken as a representation that all work is transitory, here one point and gone the next, or that some people just can't accept what you have built.

* The original Japanese script of ''[[SaGa 2]]'' involved a smuggling ring of illegal opium in Edo. The 1991 official English localization could not mention such drugs, so changed opium to "bananas". An NPC [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this by asking why bananas have to be illegal in the first place. It's obvious to most players that criminalizing bananas is silly, and the sheer organized crime involved might not exist without a legal ban on bananas. In the [[Truth in Television|real world]], this is an increasingly vocal argument against the [[Drugs Are Bad|War on Drugs]], especially after a 2011 [[United Nations]] commission declared the international War on Drugs to be a costly, violent ~~failure -- drug~~ crime and drug violence are usually caused by drug bans, not vice versa.

* The original Japanese script of ''[[SaGa 2]]'' involved a smuggling ring of illegal opium in Edo. The 1991 official English localization could not mention such drugs, so changed opium to "bananas". An NPC [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this by asking why bananas have to be illegal in the first place. It's obvious to most players that criminalizing bananas is silly, and the sheer organized crime involved might not exist without a legal ban on bananas. In the [[Truth in Television|real world]], this is an increasingly vocal argument against the [[Drugs Are Bad|War on Drugs]], especially after a 2011 [[United Nations]] commission declared the international War on Drugs to be a costly, violent failure—drug crime and drug violence are usually caused by drug bans, not vice versa.

== [[Web Comics]] ==