Accidental Aesop: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Aesop's beast fables do not teach us to be wise or honest or kind. They simply show us what will happen if we dick around with talking animals.'' |'''Peter Chiykowski,''' ''[http://rockpapercynic.com/strips/2009-03-06.jpg Rock, Paper, Cynic]''}}
|'''Peter Chiykowski,''' ''[http://rockpapercynic.com/strips/2009-03-06.jpg Rock, Paper, Cynic]''}}
 
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.
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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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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* At first, ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'''s disturbing depiction of the horrors and abuses its innocent little girl protagonists faced and how their lives were completely destroyed was lauded by many fans as a brutal [[Deconstruction]] of the lolicon genre and/or a commentary on the use of [[Child Soldiers]]. Nope. Turns out it's straight-up [[Author Appeal]]. Many of the more subversive elements and [[Fan Disservice]] of the early part of the series were apparently to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience and probably weren't even the creator's idea. As time went on and the series' popularity grew, the creator gained [[Protection From Editors]], and it became decidedly more [[Fan Service]]-y and disturbing for totally different reasons.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The series finale of ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined(2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' seems to have an [[Anvilicious]] anti-technology [[Aesop]] that comes completely out of nowhere. Ron Moore admits in his podcast on the episode that this was simply a desperate last-minute attempt to explain {{spoiler|why none of the fleet's technology was discovered after they arrived on prehistoric Earth, and he didn't put much thought into any message that could be read into it.}}
* The ''[[Bones]]'' episode "The He in the She" featured a transgender woman killed while swimming {{spoiler|by the jealous ex-wife of her lover}}, with a subplot about her life as a male preacher and her estranged son. Booth took away an Aesop about the transforming love of God and the way it can heal people's souls. Temperance concluded that the [[Aesop]] was "always swim with a buddy".
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Unquiet Dead" was perceived in some quarters as an attack on immigration (since the episode features aliens who come to Earth on the pretense of finding a new home after their planet was blown up, but are actually attempting to invade), even though the subtext was entirely unintentional.