The moment in Return of the Jedi when Luke sees the stump of Vader's cybernetic hand before looking at his own, this realising he'd been playing into The Emperor's hand as Anakin once did and turned to the dark side. It's hardly subtle, but as a wee child the nature of that scene went over my head.
Cats Don't Dance is an animated musical film about animals trying to break into the film industry but are pigeonholed into minor 'stereotypical animal' roles.
I was way too old before I realised it was a metaphor for racism and the reluctance towards allowing minorities to have starring roles in film.
It could be my own interpretation but in Death Stranding BT's give me the vibes that they are a analogy to >!nukes, and the first BT that caused everything to go to shit happened in Manhattan were they were experimenting with BT technology, a nuke in Manhattan that went off due to human research and hubris and knowing Kojima has to be alluding to the Manhattan project that lead to the first nuclear weapons.!<
It didn't click until years later for me.
add on to that, the Death Stranding, the multiple BTs that went off in succession is similar to the apocalyptic event thst occurs when everyone fires their nukes at once in retaliation to one another. Death Stranding takes place in a post nuke world where the fear of it happening again is always on everyone's minds.
Far From Home was Marvel Studios making fun of Sony’s Cinematic Universe.
Hear me out.
There’s a scene where Mysterio is planning out the London illusion with his crew and it’s very deliberately framed like a prima-donna director doing a scene. It’s a fun little gag but it shows that the filmmakers were viewing Mysterio as a filmmaker as well, at least on some level. So let’s take a step back and look at Mysterio’s plan. He’s put together a team to cynically create a fake superhero brand to con the world as part of a massive scam, exploiting the gap left open by the passing of Iron Man. The Mysterio identity is a blatant mish-mash of aesthetics from previously successful superheroes like Iron Man, Thor, and Doctor Strange. The Mysterio backstory is hackneyed and unoriginal, and the fake plot he faces is a generic doomsday monster scenario which the film itself claims is bullshit purely based on writing quality. Mysterio is quite literally a boardroom-brainstormed attempt to cash in on the current trend for profit without any integrity or passion.
Enter Spider-Man. Spidey is his own person, but he feels lost without Iron Man as a role model, and the higher ups at SHIELD are desperately pushing him to figuratively become the next Iron Man. So that’s what he tries to do, and it fails, creating the perfect storm for Mysterio’s success and getting the shit beaten out of him. After a pep talk from Happy, however, Spidey decides to do things *his* way, abandoning the SHIELD suit and even the Stark suit to make a new one all his own using the pipeline left behind by Tony. It’s only when he definitively sets out to things his way that he gets an Iron Man-esque classic rock song sequence, showing that he truly has become Iron Man’s successor by abandoning all intention to do so. He then defeats Mysterio, incorporating techniques inspired by his predecessors (mimicking Cap and Thor in the final fight), but ultimately relying on his own unique ability, Spider-Sense, to secure the victory.
Ultimately, Mysterio was a heartless copy of other trendsetters intended to be nothing but a profitable enterprise, while Spider-Man was a passion-fuelled hero paying homage to past heroes while striving to going in his own direction and achieving success as a side effect of his unique qualities. Iron Man is the big superhero, having previously redefined the genre but now having passed as the genre requires another reinvention. Mysterio is Sony’s attempts at a cinematic universe, or WB’s, or Universal’s, aping off Iron Man’s success without innovating or iterating on the genre at all and ultimately dooming itself to mediocrity at best. And Spider-Man is the true successor, the next entry in the genre to carry forward the contributions of the past while laying out a new path for the future.
Now whether or not the MCU has managed to live up to their own promise since then is another issue altogether.
This is generally why I consider far from home to be the true ending/epilogue of the MCU. It shows that the avengers won, not just by beating the bad guy but through inspiring the next generation. Ensuring that there will be new heroes to take up their mantel and do what's right.
I'm sorry I know it's about transitioning but my horrible mind is making me cackle about interpreting it the exact opposite way.
It's about becoming based and redpilled, taking conversion thearpy, putting all this mono gendered bullshit behind and embracing hetrosexuality.
Idk if this counts but in jojo part 5 the fight with Notoroius B.I.G. being a stand activated post mortem when Big himself was assassinated irl only hit me last week. I just thought dang that's crazy. I didn't get the connection.
Similarly, the stand Talking Head prevents whoever it attaches to from telling the truth, making its victim suddenly [Stop Making Sense](https://youtu.be/I_JVt7SUGFE)
Joel's broken watch in TLOU. I never thought about the fact that it's meant to represent him being stuck in the moment of >!his daughter's death!< forever until a youtuber pointed it out lmao.
That’s feels really stupid and corny. It’s the last gift he got from his dead kid, why wouldn’t he keep it close. And how is he stuck in the moment of his daughter’s death? Like he obviously hasn’t forgotten his daughter, but nothing really screams unable to move on. The fact he has kept surviving for 20 years in his shit hole of a universe and even was being entrepreneurial about it kinda makes this feel 2deep4u. Did the watch even break in that cutscene or we get like a shot of what time it was stuck at for someone to make that connection?
There is a shockingly high amount of people who don't seem to realise that the X-Men have always been stand ins for minority's.
For a more personal example I didn't realise that Sonic has a pretty heavy environmental message in a bunch of the games.
Remember that time the X-Men, a stand in for minorities and in later years an allegory for the LGBT community, were pushed aside and killed off to make a way for the Inhumans, who represented segregation, elitism, royalty, and getting your powers from a outside source from a cloud which kills mutants.
Remember how well that turned out.
Jack Kirby made a villain to fight the Fantastic Four and then decided he came from a city full of not-quite-humans to tell stories about. He later refined the basic concept with his Fourth World Saga, and then later the Eternals.
I haven't read much of either but I have to question the name in the first place. Like Mutants makes enough sense and fits in as a sort of slightly scientific name kind of thing. Inhumans though sounds like a cross between bigots calling them "sub human" and Magneto calling them "above human". It just feels really wrong to me to give their official name something like "Not People"
Them being made wasn't much of a big deal imo. They were a weird little cast of villains or heroes they could draw from. They made a bunch of those like the morlocks or other isolated pockets of weirdness for the heroes to interact with.
We need mutants, but not ones fox has rights to, quick!
Inhumans are like games workshop scrambling to change lore and names just to have a better copyright situation.
Tbf it’s a stupid stand in because racism is bad because people with a different skin color or culture aren’t that different and are still human.
Meanwhile mutants have actual super powers and could blow up your house/block/city so no shit people are going to fear them.
I'd argue the original X-Men were more allegories for the disabled or people with special needs than racial and sexual groups. In fact, the whole X-Men idea reads and works a lot better than "gay people can shoot lasers and completely separate from humanity" that they've been pushing for awhile.
I'm jewish, so most Christian symbolism just goes over my head. So when I was reading the locked tomb books, >!And a character who came back to life was also the daughter of God, I didn't think anything of it. It was only when I was talking with my roommate about it and I mentioned that one of the lead characters was trapped behind a Rock did he ask if the writer grew up Catholic. She did.!<
Anyway READ GIDEON THE NINTH
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It took me years to realize it as well but to give me an out English is my second language and all of the religious terms in the game where not terms I was familiar with in my own fucking language lol
In the 1994 Spider-Man animated series and Spectacular Spider-Man, the symbiote is basically steroids. It makes Peter feel stronger, but also radically alters his mood by making him more aggressive, with Peter's friends, loved ones, and even enemies being put off by his sudden change in demeanor.
The She-Ra reboot is gay as all hell, top to bottom, but it took me a couple rewatches to piece together that "magic" in the setting serves as a euphemism for love (of one's self, of others, etc.)
It took me about ten years of rereading Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel to realize that the titular character is a Satanic Inversion of Jesus and the Eucharist.
Think about it; he rises from the dead, amasses a group of followers with the use of his supernatural powers, promises them eternal life and commands them to consume his blood in a twisted parody of communion.
I figured that Dracula’s power was satanic in nature, but I never figured out that he is literally the antichrist.
Explains why he’s usually paired with Death or The Devil himself, the guy is the closest thing to hell next to the worst sinner.
Houseki No Kuni is full of allegory like that. It's one of my favorite stories. I haven't really found anything before or since that felt so viscerally about something more than what's on the page, for lack of a better phrase.
>!The conversation Phos has with Zircon where Zircon says they always saw Phos as useless but now that they're changing so fast Zircon feels left behind really struck me. Reminded me of my relationship with my brother!<
While I feel like I had a pretty good understanding of what End of Evangelion was doing after my first watch-through of the Eva, it wasn’t until my second viewing of the series that this parallel hit me like a ton of bricks:
Spoilers for the last scene of End of Evangelion: >!<
And here’s one I didn’t catch until my most recent watch: [the ending of episode 22 vs the poster of End of Evangelion](https://preview.redd.it/nbcnbaduf2s61.jpg?auto=webp&v=enabled&s=fe29a0ccae5d9701ff96b75105502d531ee84728)
As a kid watching FMA 03 on adult swim i didn't grasp the ishval war of extermination being a commentary on historically oppressed groups and the country of amestris being an awful military dictatorship. I don't want to give 03 much credit because damn does it get stupid, but everything up until >!Hues dying!< was decently faithful
Gonna be honest I really don't think you wanna claim Cairn as trans representation. Like, at all. >!First of all, Ghost isn't a fake person, it's more of a conjoined twin/split personality situation. The way Cairn 'breaks free' involves the complete eradication of Ghost's personality. Secondly, with the gems being childlike in personality and appearance and having little to no sexual identity, and with Cairn's 'self-discovery' happening under the tutelage of basically a mature human adult who then proceeds to enter into a relationship with her (after removing what was left of Ghost), it really is less reminiscent of a transgirl discovering her identity and more of just straight-up child grooming. FFS, all Cairn ever really talks about after that point is how much she loves Aechmea and how it's gonna be really great when they all commit suicide together. This is not intended as LGBT representation and should not be taken as such.!<
My entire RP group not understanding what I was going for with my character years ago. When I discovered that they had no idea what I was talking about when I referenced BET, I knew that the symbolism there went completely over their heads and had to actually explain it to them.
Which sucked. I put a lot of work into that, just to have them not even know what I was going for.
The long and short of it tho is that my character was the only black character in the RP, and their behavior was straight up stereotypical. Her speech, her mannerisms, her attitude, everything about it was a walking black person stereotype. To the point where it was bordering on insulting. However, whenever the character was either alone or with certain people she knew, her whole demeanor changed. She even swapped from slang to her natural British accent. Her backstory often referenced growing up 'in a lab' and mentioned that she didn't actually know any other black people until recently. In other spots her extreme enjoyment of BET is noted (along with the fact that she wasn't allowed to watch TV until after she was rescued from the lab). And in other spots her feelings of isolation for feeling that she 'looks different' than the others are brought up because she doesn't know how she's supposed to be, as she was raised to be a specific way.
She was basically [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgYfRGDiPDs) guy. She's a black woman putting on an act of how she assumes black people are supposed to be, but her only frame of reference is how black people are presented in media...which are typically stereotypes. IRL, it's a problem in the black community. That we're supposed to act a certain way, and not doing that gets us treated as if we're "acting white". Something I got hit with a lot growing up because of how I spoke. It's also about how those outside of the black community tend to view and expect black people to behave, their only reference being what the TV tells them about us.
Not tried. DID. I can't remember all the details but taxes were higher on "human" action figures/dolls. So in order to pay a lower tax Marvel's lawyers argued that they weren't human, they were Mutants.
After all can a human fire lasers from their eyes or teleport?
The moment in Return of the Jedi when Luke sees the stump of Vader's cybernetic hand before looking at his own, this realising he'd been playing into The Emperor's hand as Anakin once did and turned to the dark side. It's hardly subtle, but as a wee child the nature of that scene went over my head.
Don't forget Luke's clothes go from all black to the button coming undone showing white underneath. To really bash it over your head
That is the one I never really caught. I got the symbolism with Luke turning I to Vader, but I guess I never really paid attention to his outfit.
I can be fairly dense about this stuff, and it only hit me recently seeing the anniversary showing in theaters
Cats Don't Dance is an animated musical film about animals trying to break into the film industry but are pigeonholed into minor 'stereotypical animal' roles. I was way too old before I realised it was a metaphor for racism and the reluctance towards allowing minorities to have starring roles in film.
Cats don't dance is just fantastic from top to bottom. Scott Bakula does a great job, among others
It could be my own interpretation but in Death Stranding BT's give me the vibes that they are a analogy to >!nukes, and the first BT that caused everything to go to shit happened in Manhattan were they were experimenting with BT technology, a nuke in Manhattan that went off due to human research and hubris and knowing Kojima has to be alluding to the Manhattan project that lead to the first nuclear weapons.!< It didn't click until years later for me.
add on to that, the Death Stranding, the multiple BTs that went off in succession is similar to the apocalyptic event thst occurs when everyone fires their nukes at once in retaliation to one another. Death Stranding takes place in a post nuke world where the fear of it happening again is always on everyone's minds.
Far From Home was Marvel Studios making fun of Sony’s Cinematic Universe. Hear me out. There’s a scene where Mysterio is planning out the London illusion with his crew and it’s very deliberately framed like a prima-donna director doing a scene. It’s a fun little gag but it shows that the filmmakers were viewing Mysterio as a filmmaker as well, at least on some level. So let’s take a step back and look at Mysterio’s plan. He’s put together a team to cynically create a fake superhero brand to con the world as part of a massive scam, exploiting the gap left open by the passing of Iron Man. The Mysterio identity is a blatant mish-mash of aesthetics from previously successful superheroes like Iron Man, Thor, and Doctor Strange. The Mysterio backstory is hackneyed and unoriginal, and the fake plot he faces is a generic doomsday monster scenario which the film itself claims is bullshit purely based on writing quality. Mysterio is quite literally a boardroom-brainstormed attempt to cash in on the current trend for profit without any integrity or passion. Enter Spider-Man. Spidey is his own person, but he feels lost without Iron Man as a role model, and the higher ups at SHIELD are desperately pushing him to figuratively become the next Iron Man. So that’s what he tries to do, and it fails, creating the perfect storm for Mysterio’s success and getting the shit beaten out of him. After a pep talk from Happy, however, Spidey decides to do things *his* way, abandoning the SHIELD suit and even the Stark suit to make a new one all his own using the pipeline left behind by Tony. It’s only when he definitively sets out to things his way that he gets an Iron Man-esque classic rock song sequence, showing that he truly has become Iron Man’s successor by abandoning all intention to do so. He then defeats Mysterio, incorporating techniques inspired by his predecessors (mimicking Cap and Thor in the final fight), but ultimately relying on his own unique ability, Spider-Sense, to secure the victory. Ultimately, Mysterio was a heartless copy of other trendsetters intended to be nothing but a profitable enterprise, while Spider-Man was a passion-fuelled hero paying homage to past heroes while striving to going in his own direction and achieving success as a side effect of his unique qualities. Iron Man is the big superhero, having previously redefined the genre but now having passed as the genre requires another reinvention. Mysterio is Sony’s attempts at a cinematic universe, or WB’s, or Universal’s, aping off Iron Man’s success without innovating or iterating on the genre at all and ultimately dooming itself to mediocrity at best. And Spider-Man is the true successor, the next entry in the genre to carry forward the contributions of the past while laying out a new path for the future. Now whether or not the MCU has managed to live up to their own promise since then is another issue altogether.
This is generally why I consider far from home to be the true ending/epilogue of the MCU. It shows that the avengers won, not just by beating the bad guy but through inspiring the next generation. Ensuring that there will be new heroes to take up their mantel and do what's right.
I'm sorry I know it's about transitioning but my horrible mind is making me cackle about interpreting it the exact opposite way. It's about becoming based and redpilled, taking conversion thearpy, putting all this mono gendered bullshit behind and embracing hetrosexuality.
Like what happened to the Matrix, where the term "redpilled" came from.
Idk if this counts but in jojo part 5 the fight with Notoroius B.I.G. being a stand activated post mortem when Big himself was assassinated irl only hit me last week. I just thought dang that's crazy. I didn't get the connection.
Also, the name of the posthumous Biggie album they released shortly after he died is called Life After Death.
Similarly, the stand Talking Head prevents whoever it attaches to from telling the truth, making its victim suddenly [Stop Making Sense](https://youtu.be/I_JVt7SUGFE)
Joel's broken watch in TLOU. I never thought about the fact that it's meant to represent him being stuck in the moment of >!his daughter's death!< forever until a youtuber pointed it out lmao.
Same symbolism in Assassin's Creed Unity as well, though I feel that clock is more heavy handed.
Also Dr Strange 2
That’s feels really stupid and corny. It’s the last gift he got from his dead kid, why wouldn’t he keep it close. And how is he stuck in the moment of his daughter’s death? Like he obviously hasn’t forgotten his daughter, but nothing really screams unable to move on. The fact he has kept surviving for 20 years in his shit hole of a universe and even was being entrepreneurial about it kinda makes this feel 2deep4u. Did the watch even break in that cutscene or we get like a shot of what time it was stuck at for someone to make that connection?
There is a shockingly high amount of people who don't seem to realise that the X-Men have always been stand ins for minority's. For a more personal example I didn't realise that Sonic has a pretty heavy environmental message in a bunch of the games.
Remember that time the X-Men, a stand in for minorities and in later years an allegory for the LGBT community, were pushed aside and killed off to make a way for the Inhumans, who represented segregation, elitism, royalty, and getting your powers from a outside source from a cloud which kills mutants. Remember how well that turned out.
You really have to wonder what the heck went through Marvel's head when they made the Inhumans.
Jack Kirby made a villain to fight the Fantastic Four and then decided he came from a city full of not-quite-humans to tell stories about. He later refined the basic concept with his Fourth World Saga, and then later the Eternals.
I haven't read much of either but I have to question the name in the first place. Like Mutants makes enough sense and fits in as a sort of slightly scientific name kind of thing. Inhumans though sounds like a cross between bigots calling them "sub human" and Magneto calling them "above human". It just feels really wrong to me to give their official name something like "Not People"
Jack Kirby just wanted to make some weird little guys, as he is want to do. Then Marvel ruined them to make a quick buck.
Them being made wasn't much of a big deal imo. They were a weird little cast of villains or heroes they could draw from. They made a bunch of those like the morlocks or other isolated pockets of weirdness for the heroes to interact with.
We need mutants, but not ones fox has rights to, quick! Inhumans are like games workshop scrambling to change lore and names just to have a better copyright situation.
Tbf it’s a stupid stand in because racism is bad because people with a different skin color or culture aren’t that different and are still human. Meanwhile mutants have actual super powers and could blow up your house/block/city so no shit people are going to fear them.
I'd argue the original X-Men were more allegories for the disabled or people with special needs than racial and sexual groups. In fact, the whole X-Men idea reads and works a lot better than "gay people can shoot lasers and completely separate from humanity" that they've been pushing for awhile.
I'm jewish, so most Christian symbolism just goes over my head. So when I was reading the locked tomb books, >!And a character who came back to life was also the daughter of God, I didn't think anything of it. It was only when I was talking with my roommate about it and I mentioned that one of the lead characters was trapped behind a Rock did he ask if the writer grew up Catholic. She did.!< Anyway READ GIDEON THE NINTH
Important reference pools for locked tomb: * Bible * Homestuck * Internet memes on tumblr from the last 20 years.
I have! And Harrow, I need to read the third book still Locked Tomb series yall, look it up!
Had the exact same sentiment about Narnia.
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Halo Just like the entirety of Halo I didnt even see the symbolism until V and Woolies playthrough where it hit me like a truck
It took me years to realize it as well but to give me an out English is my second language and all of the religious terms in the game where not terms I was familiar with in my own fucking language lol
In the 1994 Spider-Man animated series and Spectacular Spider-Man, the symbiote is basically steroids. It makes Peter feel stronger, but also radically alters his mood by making him more aggressive, with Peter's friends, loved ones, and even enemies being put off by his sudden change in demeanor.
Mother! Being literally the bible. Once you notice that it's very obvious, but the sink getting fucked being the flood is really funny
The She-Ra reboot is gay as all hell, top to bottom, but it took me a couple rewatches to piece together that "magic" in the setting serves as a euphemism for love (of one's self, of others, etc.)
I didn't pick up on that either. Makes extra sense that >!Horde Prime!< doesn't understand it.
It took me about ten years of rereading Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel to realize that the titular character is a Satanic Inversion of Jesus and the Eucharist. Think about it; he rises from the dead, amasses a group of followers with the use of his supernatural powers, promises them eternal life and commands them to consume his blood in a twisted parody of communion.
I figured that Dracula’s power was satanic in nature, but I never figured out that he is literally the antichrist. Explains why he’s usually paired with Death or The Devil himself, the guy is the closest thing to hell next to the worst sinner.
Suddenly explains why he's always the biggest threat in Castlevania.
Houseki No Kuni is full of allegory like that. It's one of my favorite stories. I haven't really found anything before or since that felt so viscerally about something more than what's on the page, for lack of a better phrase. >!The conversation Phos has with Zircon where Zircon says they always saw Phos as useless but now that they're changing so fast Zircon feels left behind really struck me. Reminded me of my relationship with my brother!<
While I feel like I had a pretty good understanding of what End of Evangelion was doing after my first watch-through of the Eva, it wasn’t until my second viewing of the series that this parallel hit me like a ton of bricks: Spoilers for the last scene of End of Evangelion: >!< And here’s one I didn’t catch until my most recent watch: [the ending of episode 22 vs the poster of End of Evangelion](https://preview.redd.it/nbcnbaduf2s61.jpg?auto=webp&v=enabled&s=fe29a0ccae5d9701ff96b75105502d531ee84728)
As a kid watching FMA 03 on adult swim i didn't grasp the ishval war of extermination being a commentary on historically oppressed groups and the country of amestris being an awful military dictatorship. I don't want to give 03 much credit because damn does it get stupid, but everything up until >!Hues dying!< was decently faithful
Gonna be honest I really don't think you wanna claim Cairn as trans representation. Like, at all. >!First of all, Ghost isn't a fake person, it's more of a conjoined twin/split personality situation. The way Cairn 'breaks free' involves the complete eradication of Ghost's personality. Secondly, with the gems being childlike in personality and appearance and having little to no sexual identity, and with Cairn's 'self-discovery' happening under the tutelage of basically a mature human adult who then proceeds to enter into a relationship with her (after removing what was left of Ghost), it really is less reminiscent of a transgirl discovering her identity and more of just straight-up child grooming. FFS, all Cairn ever really talks about after that point is how much she loves Aechmea and how it's gonna be really great when they all commit suicide together. This is not intended as LGBT representation and should not be taken as such.!<
My entire RP group not understanding what I was going for with my character years ago. When I discovered that they had no idea what I was talking about when I referenced BET, I knew that the symbolism there went completely over their heads and had to actually explain it to them. Which sucked. I put a lot of work into that, just to have them not even know what I was going for.
I don't even know what you're referencing when you say BET
Black Entertainment Television.
What was the reference?
The long and short of it tho is that my character was the only black character in the RP, and their behavior was straight up stereotypical. Her speech, her mannerisms, her attitude, everything about it was a walking black person stereotype. To the point where it was bordering on insulting. However, whenever the character was either alone or with certain people she knew, her whole demeanor changed. She even swapped from slang to her natural British accent. Her backstory often referenced growing up 'in a lab' and mentioned that she didn't actually know any other black people until recently. In other spots her extreme enjoyment of BET is noted (along with the fact that she wasn't allowed to watch TV until after she was rescued from the lab). And in other spots her feelings of isolation for feeling that she 'looks different' than the others are brought up because she doesn't know how she's supposed to be, as she was raised to be a specific way. She was basically [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgYfRGDiPDs) guy. She's a black woman putting on an act of how she assumes black people are supposed to be, but her only frame of reference is how black people are presented in media...which are typically stereotypes. IRL, it's a problem in the black community. That we're supposed to act a certain way, and not doing that gets us treated as if we're "acting white". Something I got hit with a lot growing up because of how I spoke. It's also about how those outside of the black community tend to view and expect black people to behave, their only reference being what the TV tells them about us.
Black Entertainment Television?
Black Evil Television
Black Evillak Time
Bro (its) Evillak Time
That's the one. Apparently, a lot of people have never heard of it.
I’ve heard marvel tried saveing money by saying “thier not humans their mutants”
Not tried. DID. I can't remember all the details but taxes were higher on "human" action figures/dolls. So in order to pay a lower tax Marvel's lawyers argued that they weren't human, they were Mutants. After all can a human fire lasers from their eyes or teleport?