At first glance, il vaticano (a chess meme positing that a pair of bishops have a "special move" when they are two spaces apart, with two enemy pieces tucked between them) seems understandable only as an outgrowth of en passant memes. However, in this paper, we argue the opposite-- that il vaticano is a manifestation of the essence of bishopness in the collective unconscious. First, we will show that the bishop pair is defined by a forlornness, represented mechanically by their inability to defend one another due to their inability to traverse between differently colored squares. Next, we will establish that il vaticano is a detournement of this forlornness. Finally, we will discuss the resemblance of the il vaticano position to the starting position, where the king and queen are nestled between the bishops, connecting the players' desire to recreate it with their surrounding culture's intertwined desires to recreate and subvert the nuclear family.
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in reply to @bigstuffedcat's post:
The il vaticano meme keep confusing me. I saw someone saying it was a reference to bishop being moved around by the Vatican to avoid sex scandals, so it's kind of a transgressive joke, but now I'm not sure what the joke is.
My understanding was that someone on a chess memes subreddit formulated it after noticing that bishops don't have a special move like en passant or castling or [a meme that gives the knight a special move], and that everything else about it was realized post hoc. Now I'm not sure either!