Allegory Puns

You've seen it a gazillion times:

> BREAKING NEWS: blah blah blah 'shocked' blah blah | ABC News

Most people, I suspect, are vaguely willing to concede that 'the news is a propaganda tool'.

Others might argue that - if not propaganda for the purpose of programming minds and projecting The Official Narrative - most 'mainstream news' (and much of the less-mainstream news) amounts to 'click-bait'... that it is money that the publishers are ultimately after.

I say they do not need our money.

This is the premise (and perhaps a promise):

• Every day there are A VAST NUMBER of news headlines published for the average person to digest. Many of these headlines are read by many people.
• THE VAST MAJORITY of these headlines are 'constructions'. They are spells, placed in front of your eyes for reasons other than that implied by the obvious message of headlines themselves.
• A VERY FEW of these headlines are 'organic' (reddit worldnews, for example, has perhaps slightly more chance of featuring 'natural news' than the rest of the 'mainstream' sources of 'fact-checked' institutions).
• Each headline, regardless of the truth of the 'facts' being reported on, is a multilayered wordplay: a little poem, precisely calculated, and containing numerous pop-culture references, literary references, mythological anecdotes and RIDICULOUS amounts of sexual innuendo.
• The more opportunities a 'real-world occurrence' provides for embedding such wordplay, the more likely it is to be selected and engineered to 'go viral' (that is... to go feral. For all.)
• If there are no real current affairs offering the above creative possibility, then some current affairs will be invented, scripted, and staged.
• Once clued in to the possibilities of the above, it might be difficult to see past what appears to be a massive organized mockery of the people of the world.
• However, there is some chance that it amounts to a calculated tactic of 'cast dung-covered pearls before swine, in order to find the shine'.
• The linguistic techniques used in constructing headlines include: simile, metaphor, allegory, puns, anagrams, consonantal root drift, vowel shifting, space-shifting, implications made by apostrophe-s, etc.
• The above might all be classified as techniques constituting a universal 'cant' (ie. cryptolect, or secret language, aka. the Language of the Birds [bards], the Green Language, or

Time and time again I see this same trope played out and yet I can never make sense of how people think that its suitable. Let me ask would you send your child to a school that that a mutant who can shoot lazers out of their eyes? Would you be alright with your your little brother or sister sitting in a class with someone who can possibly turn into a titan? Are you completely and utterly ok with your niece or nephew going to a school with anthropomorphic bears and wolves? This is kinda the problem most media falls into like X men or Attack on titan honestly where their racism isn’t actually unfounded in bias and people have a real reason to be afraid. Most mutants are more powerful than guns and can very easily kill a regular human if they choose to do so. Attack on titan I can give slack but the problem is their bias is still not unfounded and is rooted in some truths that eldians can turn into giant monsters.

Racism is meant to be unfounded bias that doesn’t make sense nor is truthful in anyway, shape or form. All races may be different in some ways but in the end we all are human who can get kill in the same ways. Once you actually give a real reason for why people are discriminating against that certain race it stops being a actual racism allegory and something different all together that now has a founded reason as to why they hate that race.

This isn’t to say I’m not a fan of such stories as it does bring attention to racism itself and exploring the concept however in the end I’m merely expressing that things like x men aren’t really suitable for being a real racism allegory.

I, after being unable to sleep for an entire night and morning for no apparent reason, just woke up from a dream in which I was a little girl being raised in some weird hypersexual cult. No one was actually saying anything about sex, but completely innocent actions were sexualized. There were no boundaries, with cult leaders listening in on children and somehow knowing their innermost thoughts through telepathy or something. I can't really describe what was actually going on because I don't remember it very well even just after waking, but I do know that towards the end of the dream, I was kicked out of their happy little circle because I had chased another girl (who had some sort of special status- I believe she was the cult leaders' daughter- and was the "villain" of the dream) after she did something bad to me and pulled on her dress in order to catch her, which was interpreted as a lesbian sexual attack. I also know that my mother was shot in the head at the very end.

In real life, my mother told me a lot of sexually inappropriate things when I was a child. She brought sex into innocuous actions (for an example that I just recently remembered, when I was 13-14 there was a work crew in my house and I laid down on my bed and started reading a book, and she screamed at me "you don't lie down in the bed when there are a bunch of strange men in the house!") I tried to protect myself by pretending to be a completely asexual being who was horrified at the thought of genitals, but my mom never believed me; she always said that I was as sexual as she was deep down. It turned out that she behaved this way (in part) because she had a brain tumor, which eventually killed her. I think that's why she was shot in the head in my dream. Several years later, my hypersexual and codependent group of friends accused me of touching one of them, another girl, without her consent when we were all high (we did "experiment", in a very PG-13 way, but I had no memory of any indication from her that she didn't want to). The threats and harrassment I got from them later drove me to social isolation and were a contributing factor to me taking a leave of absence from college, which I'm still on almost 2 years after leaving campus. In the dream, my grandmother had been the one to join this cult; in real life, my grandmother tried to instill me with what my dad calls "19th century Negro middle-class values" and is responsible for a lot of my twisted beliefs about the world today. The

The big conflict of the movie is between Mirabel and Abuela, although you might say everyone in the family is in conflict with Abuela. Abuela represents the baby Boomer generation - hard working & sees value through work/contributions, but also prefers to ignore problems rather than confront them. Also, she's still the one in charge and makes the rules.

The parents are Gen X. They grew up in a single parent household like a lot of Gen X/latchkey kids. They recognize the problems in the current system but feel powerless to change them, so they tend to be pragmatic, work with what they've got, and DIY a workaround.

The grandkids represent the end of the millennial generation and the beginning of Gen Z. They're more willing to challenge the status quo, place more value on work conditions and mental health of the workers, etc.

In one sense, Encanto is a story about family dysfunction, but a lot of it feels like it mirrors the current struggle to improve the lives of the working class - raising the minimum wage, paid family leave, things like that. Abuela blaming everything on Mirabel is reflective of how all these dying industries were blamed on millennials. Telling Mirabel to stop trying to fix the magic is like how alternative solutions to fix the economy/environment/etc. get dismissed as "impractical" or would only make things worse.

Most of the work of fixing things is put on Mirabel/millennials, but it also requires her/them to understand the other generations, and it requires the older generation to be flexible and to allow the younger generation help steer the ship.

Edit

A lot of you seem to be misunderstanding the theory. I'm not referring to the very obvious intergenerational conflicts at play within this family. That's a major theme of the movie, but it's not an allegory. What I'm saying is the movie is also an allegory for the current conflict between generations in American society.

Abuela represents all the baby boomers, is clinging onto power, and is the one who needs to change most. Bruno represents gen x, has been lying low and trying to fix things behind the scenes but has been unsuccessful. Mirabel represents millennials and is the one most driving for change. The conflict - losing the magic due to only valuing people for what they can produce and not for who they are - is the same conflict that currently exists between the generations.

The allegory is that these people are symbols of larger concepts.

Neo: "I thought you were a guy."

Trinity: "I also used to think that I am a guy. Come with me if you want to become like me."

Neo: "You mean, like, totally cool and badass?"

Trinity: "Yes, that's totally what I meant."

---

Morpheus: "You can either take the pink pill or not take the pink pill."

Neo: "There is no second pill?"

Morpheus: "You mean the baby blue pill? That one is for women. But you are a man. You have to take the pink pill. If you take the wrong pill it's gonna have the opposite effect! That's why we color-coded those pills. So that we don't mix up what each pill does."

Neo: "Makes perfect sense! OK, I'll take the pink pill."

Morpheus: "Hold on. I don't just give the pill to anyone who asks for it. We have a rule. We don't free a mind until it has proven that it is actually capable of feeling the matrix. It's dangerous. I've seen it before. It affects 0.094% of people who take the pill but rules are rules."

Neo: "But I followed the rabbit and everything! What more do I have to do?"

Morpheus: "Go buy some black robes and some sunglasses and meet me again next week."

Neo: "So that's why you're all wearing those things. It's the official uniform of your little club. It's how you recognize each other."

Morpheus: "Actually no. After we free your mind you have the right to wear whatever you want. We just choose to continue wearing those things because we find them cool."

Neo: "Still, I find this rule totally gatekeepy and arbitrary and I don't see how it has anything to do with whether one can feel the Matrix or not."

Morpheus: "Yeah, I agree. I can't wait until this rule gets abolished but it hasn't yet so here we are. Originally, we just gave the pill to anyone who asks. But pills don't grow on trees, you know? So someone came up with a set of rules that people have to fulfill before they get the pill. The rules were then abolished over the years because they were fought against by the previous Ones. The last remaining rule, the rule about our clothing, was originally implemented to see who can safely wear those clothes without being murdered by Agent Smith. That's how he recognizes us, you know."

Neo: "JESUS CHRIST!!!"

Morpheus: "But nowadays, people understand the rule to be a test to see if that pill is really so important to you that you're willing to wear those clothes-"

Neo: "Whatever, I'll get those clothes!"

---

Neo: "Ugh, stupid rules making me buy those stupid clothes! I didn't even wanna wear them and now I have t

I've got Peter Cawdron's Xenophobia and a few of his others already

This is a long rant with a lot of evidence, so here's a quick TL;DR: The Hisui Region, and the events and plot of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, are clearly an allegory for Ezochi at the beginning of Japan's Meiji Era.

And here's the TL;DR that needs its own TL;DR:Game Freak has made anthropogenic extinction one of PLA's underlying themes, basing the game on the group of people responsible for both the ecological survey of Ezochi and, inadvertently, for the extinction of much of Ezochi's wildlife and also less inadvertently for the subjugation and exploitation of its native people. Many of the game's Pokémon and their descriptions are based either partially or entirely on animals that went extinct during the Meiji Era or later on as a result of the ecological impact of the Hokkaido Development Commission. This calls for a complete re-analysis of all the information we've been provided so far, and it also debunks or supports many current theories and leaks about the game.

When I say "allegory", I don't just mean that the game is inspired by the Meiji Era and set in Ezochi; even from the information currently available to us, the attention to detail and the sheer depth of the connections between PLA and the Hokkaido Development Commission is cause for excitement and for an extensive re-analysis of everything we know about the game.

To understand the historical allegories packed into the game, we need to begin with some quick history lessons about Ezo, Ezochi, Hokkaido, The Hokkaido Development Commission, and the beginning of the Meiji Era:

Up until the beginning of the Meiji Era, Hokkaido was known as Ezochi* and was largely untouched by the Japanese government. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, the Meiji government established the Hokkaido Development Commission (AKA the Hokkaido Colonization Office, or Kaitakushi**) to colonize and develop infrastructure in Ezochi, fearing the possibility of Russian colonization in the region.

^(*Note - There is currently a common misconception that Hisui correlates to Ezo: this is only partially true. Hokkaido is the name the Meiji administration gave to the island of) *^(Ezochi)*^(, which is indeed the main landmass of the area known as Ezo. This might sound trivial, but it is important to note here that Hokkaido is) ^(only) *^(the modern name for the island of Ezochi, and not for the rest of Ezo. The difference is kind of like Australia the country vs. Australia the continent, except if you re

there’s no jerk to this just a thought i had when reading it

The quoted sections are my thoughts for how a TRoS post-credit ‘dlc’ could re-contextualise the trilogy as an allegory.

>Ben is awoken from a dream (that ended with his disappearance/death in TRoS) by Luke who has entered his quarters. Luke notices and they briefly discuss the dream alongside Luke saying he struggles with his own premonitions. The implication essentially being the sequel trilogy is the shared dreamlike personification of the fears and anxieties of its characters, not unlike Anakin’s dreams in the prequels.

The sequels, when viewed from the perspective of Luke, are an incarnation of his greatest fears, specifically that he will fail to live up to his father’s sacrifice and will abandon his friends and allies when they need him most. From Ben’s perspective, it may reflect an underlying anxiety that his inability to control his emotions could lead him to the Darkside. Unlike Anakin who succumbed to the fear of his premonitions in large part due to his circumstances, Luke and Ben avoid this fate due to the healthier teachings of the reformed Jedi Order and a stronger emotional support base.

>The two could spend time reminiscing before a more sombre tone sets in for a discussion about Leia’s funeral, essentially a tribute to Carrie Fisher. Have them leave the room to allow for a shot of them walking the halls of a new Jedi temple, with small details and callbacks to the saga. Conclude with a short dialogue-free scene of Leia’s funeral with the other characters gathered to pay their respects.

This is not suggesting a dismissal or de-canonisation of the sequels, rather a re-contextualisation. There were a lot of ideas I liked in the trilogy, especially from TLJ, though I feel the sloppy overall execution and their disconnected nature leave a bitter taste to the ending of the Skywalker Saga, at least in my opinion. If the sequel trilogy is viewed as an interconnected allegory for the personal anxieties of its characters then the characterisation and general events of the ST could be reconciled with the idea of a timeline in which there was no major conflict following RoTJ, outside of perhaps dealing with Empire remnant states that are collectively and allegorically portrayed as the First Order; its massively fluctuating strength throughout the trilogy representative of different individual conflicts against weaker or stronger remnants.

For a further example, the trilogy from Rey’s perspective is reflective of her identity crisis follo

Legend of Korra’s season ones Equalists are so sloppy as a metaphor that people debate if their meet to be fascists or radical leftists. Which is incredibly sloppy.

Also in Korra they made a oppsie writing mistake where the Xenophobic fascist dictator the most sympathetic of Korra’s villains.

Also the entirety of Detroit become human where a white Frenchmen writes about racism and discrimination.

Season 1. A new year. New goals.

Race 1.

Nearly 100 laps of practice.

2 laps for qualifying.

P4 on the grid in top split. A good start makes it P2 going into turn 1. Brake for Turn 2…one car on the inside. Tires are cold. Be careful not to lock up. Find your turn in point.

BAM A bump in the rear. The car spins off track and into the wall. Meatball flag.

Some of us don’t have the time to race split after split. Some of us plan, prepare, practice, and try to make the most of limited track time. We set personal goals to have a summit to stand on, a bar to clear and a reference to measure ourselves against. It makes each race that much more significant. Hopefully more enjoyable. Sometimes, just more painful.

When all the hard work seems taken from a driver for no fault of their own, it’s difficult. It seems silly to go to sleep lamenting the result, only to wake up with salt still stinging on the wound. And yet, what is the answer? Resentment? Retaliation? No…only acceptance.

Whether through fault of your own, fault of another, or perhaps no fault at all on either end—a simple error. 5 meters too late on the brakes, pushing for position at the lead of a tight grid. We’ve all been there. Sometimes the victim, sometimes the bell-end.

And where do we go from there? Within.

What could I have done differently? Was I too aggressive? Was I not aggressive enough? Should I protest? How do I prevent this in the future? If only ‘x’, I could have ‘y’. If only…if only…

Nothing is promised in this sport. You plan, prepare, and practice. You go again, you stay committed and you wait for luck to push your opportunity to the end of the race. This is racing. And either on the tarmac or in a sim, it’s all the same. You vs the others. Actively calculating infinite variables, making decisions, executing the timing. Lap, after lap, after lap. Each one different than the one before, by tenths, hundredths, thousands of a second. We strive for perfection that will never come only for it to be undone by that mother !@#$%er! Forgive them.

Take a breath. Take a break.

Persist. Plan. Prepare. Practice.

The results will come.

This is racing.

It's just that I heard a lot of people say that Isayama is trying to excuse Nazism with what the Eldians arguably represent, thematically.

Here's David's review of the film and the problem with how climate change is portrayed in entertainment media in general:

https://www.volts.wtf/p/dont-look-up-the-first-good-movie

Here's an interesting discussion of the director and writer Adam McKay's creative process for the film and why he made it if anyone is interested:

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/12/dont-look-up-adam-mckay-netflix-movie/621104/

The tale starts in the idyllic safety of the Shire (summer holidays) where the hobbits (NQTs) bask in their ignorance of upcoming events. They are visited by Gandalf (HoD), who tells them of the great danger of Sauron (Ofsted). They must carry the ring of power (exam classes) to safety out of the Shire (a few weeks into September). Gandalf (HoD) refuses to carry the ring (exam classes) because he has “other duties”.

At first the ring (exam classes) seems to offer the hobbits (NQTs) some sort of invisibility (from other duties) but they quickly learn it brings the attention of the Nine (SLT). Gandalf (HoD) is now nowhere to be seen. The hobbits make many mistakes, including taking a rest near old man willow (after school clubs). They are rescued by Tom Bombadill, an ancient fellow who seems above all the cares of this world (part time, semi-retired teacher).

In the inn at Bree (the local pub) the fabled Strider finally emerges out of the wilderness, looking dirty and disorganised (NQT mentor). He leads them through the annoyance of the mosquito marshes (paperwork) to safety on weathertop (inset day). Here, the hobbits (NQTs) ignore the advice of Strider (NQT mentor) and are surrounded by the Nine (SLT) and skewered by an evil sword (given extra duties to do), which will surely be fatal. The elf Arwen (immortal, non TLR, non SLT colleague) carries the hobbit Frodo to safety at Rivendell (October half term).

At Rivendell Elrond (Head teacher) holds a great council (staff meeting) where they decide what to do with the ring (exam classes). Gimli the Dwarf (TLR holder who has delved too greedily) suggests splitting the ring of power (exam classes), but the axe fails (timetabling problems). The hobbits finally offer to carry the ring, though they ask for mentoring as they do not know the way.

The Fellowship (departmental staff) sets off from Rivendell (October half term) and immediately it gets dark under the mines of Moria (clocks go back). Gandalf tells the hobbits to mind the way (stick to the behaviour policy) but the fool of a Took Pippin (dopey NQT) ignores this advice and stirs the danger in the deep (does not apply behaviour policy). Thousands of goblins begin to stir (badly behaved year 7s and 8s). The Fellowship are chased, where they meet a foul foe, the Balrog (external SLT conducting a mock OFSTED). Gandalf is lost preventing the Balrog from getting to the Fellowship.

The fellowship stumble into the forest of Lothlorien (christmas holiday), whe

Hi hi!

I'm a trans woman and a writer and for a while now I've been doing #TransTuesday posts on Twitter, just talking about my transition and what it means to be trans in this world.

I kept getting asked about the trans allegory of The Matrix, so I eventually did a series of threads explaining it all so I had something I could point people to. But that caused me to continually be asked about the sequels, and long story short I've done multiple threads (18 so far, I think, I'm in the middle of Resurrections now) explaining the entire allegory in detail.

The allegory of each movie builds upon the last one, so you have to understand The Matrix to understand Reloaded to understand Revolutions to understand Resurrections. They're incredibly layered and deep, moreso that I'd realized before I started, and they speak to and about us in ways no other mass media really does. And they're 100% intentional, because they're so specific all the way through all four movies it could not have been coincidence.

I always liked the movies, but now they've become vitally important to me in a way I didn't anticipate.

Anyway, I've been lurking forever but finally made an account to share them here in case anyone was interested. Happy to answer questions or discuss. :)

They're all linked from here:
https://twitter.com/TillyBridges/status/1475194703544864769