Aesoptinum: Difference between revisions

A form of [[Phlebotinum]] with a moral component which exists only so that the author can build [[An Aesop|a moral lesson]] out of it.

Compare with [[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child]]; sometimes these tropes overlap. May or may not turn into a [[Fantastic Aesop]]. Can result in a [[Phlebotinum Muncher]] or [[Mary Suetopia]].

== Anime[[Comic & MangaBooks]] ==

* The ''[[THUNDERT.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (Comic Book)|THUNDER Agents]]''' Menthor helmet gives its user telepathy, which lets Janus see [[Rousseau Was Right|the good in others]] and become more empathetic, leading him to [[Heel Face Turn|turn from evil to good]].

* In ''[[Ghost in Thethe Shell]] Innocence'', {{spoiler|the gynoids' sentience is due to their containing copies of the ghosts of abducted preteen girls. The ghost-copying procedure eventually kills the girls. Even more disturbingly, they were first brainwashed into near-robots so that the gynoids wouldn't be ''too'' human-like - and that they were intended to be [[Sex Bot|Sexbots]]. Despite all this, a surviving girl and her rescuer are actually chastised by the heroine, as she says that [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|the real victims were the robots]].}}

* Subtly parodied (along with [[Phlebotinum]] in general) in the novel ''[[Generation Dead]]'', as the proposals by scientists to "explain" the whole "teenagers suddenly coming back as zombies" phenomenon, which are mentioned in asides throughout the book, tend towards this. Choice examples include proposals that it was caused by "too much fast food", "too many [[First-Person Shooter]] games", and -- thanksand—thanks to the expansion of the book's accompanying [[Character Blog]] -- "too many generations eating microwaved food". Naturally, ''none'' of them is true.

* Norman Spinrad's 60s sci-fi novel ''[[Bug Jack Barron (Literature)|Bug Jack Barron]]'' has an Evil Rich White Man gaining immortality from {{spoiler|[[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child|the glands of irradiated-to-death children]]}}, with the one we know about in the book being {{spoiler|African-American}}. Good book, [[Anvilicious]] [[Aesop]].

* Damon Knight's short story ''Rule Golden'' has an alien that spreads a special plague which induces tele-empathy. This means that prison guards become depressed from the sadness of their prisoners, somebody that strikes someone else will feel the pain from their blow, and somebody that kills someone else will suddenly drop dead (strangely, this even includes such acts from a distance, such as shooting someone, which just kills the shooter rather than everyone else within the same radius). The ostensible reason the alien does this is to make humans become peaceful before they invent interstellar travel, with a side benefit supposedly being the elimination of hierarchic governments (since "government is force"). For no particular reason, the plague affects all warm-blooded animals, not just humans. This means that all mammals and birds are now effectively vegetarians (unless their prey are insufficiently cuddly-looking), causing the extinction of [[Carnivore Confusion|larger beasts of prey]] all over the world.

* Similarly, [[Stanislaw Lem]]'s short story ''[[The Cyberiad (Literature)|Highest Possible Level of Development]]'' had a drug, Altruzine, that caused tele-empathy, but the story is much more tongue-in-cheek. The results are still not altruistic, though: a man with a toothache has its painful tooth ripped out by nearby people who don't want to feel the pain, a newlywed couple is nearly mobbed outside their hotel where they consummate the marriage (and criticized on their poor performance), and depressed people are driven from towns rather than treated.

* The [[John Brunner]] novel, ''[[The Stone That Never Came Down]]'', centers around an artificial, self-replicating protein (today, we'd call it a prion) that eliminates selective inattention -- theinattention—the brain ''has'' to make connections between pieces of information that it previously ignored. In addition to an intelligence boost, this bestows automatic empathy, since those infected can no longer disregard the genuine pain that others feel.

* ''[[Dune]]'': The Spice is petroleum. Given that that the spice is [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|found only in a desert wasteland inhabited by deeply religious Arabic-speaking tribes]], and that [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|everyone and his brother is willing to make insidious plots and outright go to war just to control it]], anyone doubting that the spice is a metaphor for petroleum is living under a rock.

* [[Larry Niven]] openly admits to using this trope on occasion. A believer in science, high technology, and nuclear power in specific, in ''[[LucifersLucifer's Hammer]]'' he made the workers at a nuclear power plant heroes who were struggling to keep civilization together. They were fighting against environmental extremist, anti-technology (and very specifically, anti-''nuclear'' technology) cannibal raiders.

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* ''[[Shock Social Science Fiction|Shock: Social Science Fiction]]'' encourages this in its worldbuilding phase.

* In the ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' ''[[Dark Sun]]'' setting, using magic damages the environment.

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* One ''[[DuckDuckTales Tales(1987)]]'' episode features the titular "Pearl of Wisdom", which will grant whoever holds it at a certain point at sunrise temporary infinite wisdom. ''Every'' person who has ever stolen it and used it in this manner realizes the error of their ways during their "moment of wisdom," and voluntarily returns the pearl to the islanders from whom it was stolen. [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|(This is why the islanders are never bent out of shape whenever the pearl IS stolen -- they know it will eventually be brought back to them.)]]

* ''[[Batman Beyond (Animation)|Batman Beyond]]'' had "Splicing", a new technology that allowed a human to mix their DNA with that of an [[Petting Zoo People|animal]], giving them cool features. [[Blatant Lies|It's safe, we assure you.]] Naturally, it became an allegorical aesop for drug abuse and extreme body modification.

* ''[[Visionaries: Knights of the Magical (Animation)|VisionariesLight]]'' had such an example built into the wizard spellbook: the ''Secret Secret Spell.'' Anyone who steals the book and casts it creates what ''appears'' to be [[The End of the World Asas We Know It]] and finds themselves racing back to the legitimate owner of the book so he can reverse it, restoring things back to normal.

[[Category:AesoptinumPower Source]]