What "is" is – precedence and outlook

Bill Clinton said a thing about "is", but that was 26 years, 1 month, 17 days, 7 hours, 26 minutes, and 15 seconds ago.

Today is the future, lads, so let's take a look at what the precise definition of "is" will be (eventually).

Example #1: 1984
George Orwell was pretty innovative with this one. The three sentences are arranged in a classic triangular fashion, with the longest sentence at the bottom and the shortest at the top. His early use of such an arrangement likely paved the way for similar triangles in British colloquialisms throughout the second half of the twentieth century. A common language technique in modern British parlance is to combine multiple triangles into blocks and distribute them amongst one's friends. Of note: the word "blocks" is sometimes pronounced as "blokes" or "bollocks", depending on how thick the speaker's accent is.

In the novel 1984, these words are written on the side of a large pyramid located in the burbs of London (probably). Orwell adamantly insisted that the pyramids would migrate north out of Egypt due to rising sea levels throughout the Mediterranean region. The ongoing government crackdown on unregulated pyramid imports/exports has, for better or worse, prevented his dreams from coming true, at least temporarily. Nevertheless, a few counterfeit pyramids still find their way onto the streets of London every year, with dealers peddling them as "egypto" to avoid arousing suspicion from authorities.

The syllables in each line of this pyramid are 3, 6, and 5, respectively. Only two of these numbers are countable on one hand; "freedom is slavery" requires two hands. Orwell knew first-hand that a pyramid cannot be built single-handedly, especially by a slave (unless said slave happens to have the "Dual Wielder" feat, but that was rather uncommon back in his day). Orwell also knew that a pyramid cannot be built left-handedly, hence why its center-of-mass aligns with its local y-axis.

Example #2: ULTRAKILL
The color palette on this one is pretty great. Many things in life are red, such as communism, meat, and Baba (see below).

ULTRAKILL opts for another triangle, but strives for a deeper artistic expression in the word architecture, with the longest sentence at the top and the shortest sentence at the bottom. When put onto paper using an inkjet-style printer, more red ink is used per-line as the lines descend, even though less overall typographical characters are present, which sends a clear message about the latent trickle-down effect of the future blood economy.

"Red" has three letters, just like how all triangles have three sides, which completes the analogy.

Example #3: Baba Is You
Baba Is You includes 33% more "is" than 1984 or ULTRAKILL. This is to account for the inflation that occurred during the 2021 cryptocurrency bubble. The Ministry of Truth was largely unaffected by this inflation, as they tend to invest in enterprise-grade Nvidia hardware for their AI-accelerated content creation tools. The machines of ULTRAKILL, however, have historically relied on consumer-grade AMD products due to the improved price-to-performance ratio in everyday tasks. With a dearth of supply and no government bailout in sight, the machines had no choice but to descend into Hell in an attempt to acquire Big Navi at near-MSRP prices; very few are known to have ever succeeded in this, however.

Baba et al. utilized the frequent inter-faction strife between The Party and the machines as an excuse to fortify their defensive position; this is why their "is" stack resembles a wall instead of a pyramid. Furthermore, by including the phrase "wall is stop", Baba et al. makes it clear that they seek no part in the conflicts. This also protects their flag from the impromptu "Capture the Flag" events that have plagued much of Northern Europe ever since the release of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 (not depicted on this page).

Example #4: Hotel Mario
This is it, Luigi. — Mario

All tyrrany must eventually cease; this is the immortal lesson of Hotel Mario, released in 1994 for the Philips CD-i console. Mario and Luigi, with the help of the player and the enclosed instruction book, overcome countless adversities in their mission to find the princess. Perhaps if Bill Clinton and Winston Smith had also enlisted the help of the player and the enclosed instruction book, they could have avoided their respective fates of impeachment and torture. This also illustrates that lust is a poor motivational force when compared to gluttony in terms of its indulgence-to-success ratio (I hope she made lotsa spaghetti!).

Example #5: Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer
Now I am become death
Because I was an idiot

In these two examples, Oppenheimer used "is" in the first-person singular present tense as well as in the first-person singular past tense; he understood well that there is no one right way to "is".

Oppenheimer, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and 1984 utilize heteronormativity as plot elements. All three stories also underline the harmful role of male privilege and unchecked lust in their respective timelines, since each man pursues "a relationship with [Jean Tatlock / Miss Lewinsky / Julia] that was not appropriate", which eventually causes him to lose his security clearance / reputation / teeth. By contrast, Mario and Luigi take a more socially-progressive approach to problem-solving by dismantling Bowser's illegitimate authoritarian regime, which had become the de facto government of the Mushroom Kingdom. Their success further highlights why gluttony is a better sin than lust. The brothers sought not sex, but spaghetti; that's why they're heroes.

ULTRAKILL features Gabriel, who represents the tsundere archetype throughout his professional relationship with V1 (Gabriel realized he had been mistaken. The strong fire that burned inside him was not hatred at all, but passion.). Like the Mario Brothers, Gabriel is heavily motivated by spaghetti, which is why V1 initially meets him in the third layer of Hell, a giant stomach colloquially referred to as "Gluttony". It's very possible that V1 also killed Mario and Luigi on its way to Gabriel's picnic, but, since the brothers are presumably of different taxonomological classification than mankind due to their marked anatomical discrepancies, we cannot safely assume them to have already become husks by that time (they could potentially be native inhabitants of Hell, however).

Baba, being you, does not have canonically-predefined romantic or sexual preferences, instead inheriting these properties from the player (void where prohibited).

Example #6: waluigi-servebeer.com
Stop it's too much — funk_button, after starting the party

This website uses a contraction: "it is" becomes "it's." Also, stop; quit while you're ahead.