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syzygyzip · 7 years

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The Myth and Meaning of MissingNo

A few notes about this essay: first, I have removed the period from the name “MissingNo.” for ease of transcription. I also refer to MissingNo’s sibling as Bar ‘M Bar or [][][][] ‘M [][][][] because its real name is irreproducible in Unicode:

Also, for the purposes of this essay it is helpful to think of Pokémon less as animals and more as a gamut of spectral entities: yokai, devas, fairies, sprites, genies, elemental intelligences, ghosts, servitors, unincorporated astral matter, etc. All those strange and elusive beings who populate world mythology and the collective imagination. In contrast to our world, however, people in Kanto are universally aware of these entities and their relation to ourselves. Much more can be said on this subject, but allow the basic premise to inform your reading when it feels appropriate. The subject before us is liminal by its nature.

Myths, Stories, and Suspicions

When we encounter a glitch in a game the temptation is to say that it broke our immersion. Maybe it’s because children are more easily entranced, but as a child my experience with MissingNo did not feel particularly incongruous with the narrative. The encounter, though strange, didn’t contradict the world of the game -- it expanded it in a psychedelic direction. When I met MissingNo, the battle played out more or less as normal. It was only the image of the creature, the arcane initiation, and the haunting after-effects that were atypical.

As soon as Pokémon Red & Blue came out, one fact of life became very clear: Kids love to spread tall tales about Pokémon. It was quite common to hear about Mew hiding under a truck or Togepi skulking around in the inaccessible wilderness behind Bill’s house. But the purported apparition of something called “MissingNo” or “Bar ‘M Bar” held an especially uncanny sway, because everyone believed it to be true. The basic story was that you talk to an old man, and then fly to an island where you meet bizarre and game-glitching Pokémon – but the many accounts which peppered the playground and Internet each held idiosyncratic details. Some said Mewtwo would turn up on the island, others said they found Pokémon native to the Safari Zone, or rogue trainers, or that you could multiply your items by 100. When I finally initiated what came to be known as the “Old Man Glitch”, I performed it in the prescribed manner:

Talk to the Old Man in the North of Viridian City. He will show you how to catch a Weedle.

As soon as the Old Man is finished, fly to Cinnabar Island.

On the island, walk over to the eastern edge and use Surf.

Surf the very edge of the water, moving up and down.

And sure enough, there appeared a fuzzy Tetris-looking rando named [][][][] ‘M [][][][]. Armed with a little background research, I succeeded in slaying this entity, and came away with 128 rare candies, a glitched out Hall of Fame record, and a whole lot of questions. The experience was so simple and tidy, and the performance of the glitch was just dreamlike enough that my young mind felt the thin silver light of meaning shining dimly from behind the supposedly arbitrary method of contact.

MissingNo and its glitch siblings became well known in the Pokémon community as reliable and functional game exploits, and stuck in the imagination for the peculiarity of their presentation. The programming quirks behind MissingNo’s operations are well understood, and the character has wormed its way into a sizable number of fan theories and creepypastas. Something about this strange little block of static resonates with players, and it seems to have surrounded itself with cryptic clues as to its true nature.

The Method of Contact

The first step to understanding a mysterious aberration in a game is to consider the events that lead up to it. What must the player do in order to find MissingNo? The trip begins by talking to an old man in Viridian City who shows the player how to catch Pokémon by snagging a wild Weedle in a brief scripted encounter. This is an interesting motif right off the bat, because we are meeting a teacher figure who shows us how to catch the worm. In dreams and in myth, the worm is often a symbolic representation of the Kundalini serpent, the principal driving force of life itself which coils at the base of the spine. The Old Man is found near the beginning of the game, and he will show you this tutorial as many times as you like. After all, he is teaching an essential lesson: catch the Pokémon around you to expand your team; or more abstractly: integrate the aspects of nature which complete you.

Viridian city itself is a special place, in that we begin and end our Pokémon journey there. It is the first town we come to after leaving home, and it is also host to the final gym and provides a road to the Pokémon League – the culmination of a trainer’s journey. The next step to MissingNo is to fly to volcanic Cinnabar Island, which is incidentally the last town a trainer discovers. So we have leapt from the site of our first lesson to the final city. Here on Cinnabar we walk straight east to the beach, and use surf to ride a Pokemon up and down the edge of the water. If we venture further out to sea, the ritual is forfeit and we must restart. So we glide up and down and up. Here along the crashing waves, apparitions greet us according to our name. The letters in the player’s name are the values that determine which Pokémon appear – and what form MissingNo takes. With this, contact is made. So let’s take a look at this setting. The island is a classic symbol of self-conception: a crystallization of identity emergent from the undifferentiated ocean. There happens to be a volcano on this island, which is also a timeless symbol: that of the eruption of unconscious content; hidden energy and power which has formerly lain dormant and unknown. We encounter MissingNo in a rather narrow area: a single column of tiles representing the edge of an island. We move up and down this coast attempting to trigger the event, swimming/surfing/pacing along the seashore. This is an incredibly profound detail, because the shore of the ocean signifies the mediation between the mundane terrestrial (the land) and the vast realm of the unconscious (the ocean). The fact that it is the Eastern coast is a bonus, as that is the place where the sun rises in its most prolonged glow, and gives birth to the new day. The island itself is named Cinnabar, home to a research facility that serves a major role in the game’s plot. As we discover through research notes littered about, Cinnabar Mansion was the site of a series of experiments to re-create Mew, which is thought to be a primordial Pokémon. Famously, this resulted in the creation of Mewtwo, an anthropomorphic “clone” of Mew who lacks the originator’s genetic purity (Mewtwo cannot learn any TM, as Mew can), but appears to have gained a humanlike awareness, a trait lengthily elaborated in the first Pokémon movie. Mew as Prima Materia

So what does Mew symbolize? It is known to resemble an embryo, and believed to be the ancestor of all other Pokémon. It is a light pink, which is interesting given that the alchemical prima materia – the formless substance that composes the primeval material of the universe – is said to be dually white and red. In the original games it is only attainable through the metatextual experience of an IRL promotional event, and was allegedly inserted into the game secretly. Mew is clearly meant to be a transcendent being, notoriously elusive and often depicted in space.

Mew is the only pokemon that learns Transform, except of course for Ditto. This has spawned a highly popular fan theory that Dittos are failed clones of Mew. There are some supporting reasons for this idea: they share the same coloration (in both common and shiny iterations), the same weight, the same stats, and Ditto is present at locations relevant to Mew’s story (notably the Pokémon Mansion and the Cerulean Cave, where Mewtwo is found). Unlike Mew, which cannot breed in game, Ditto can successfully mate with any non-Legendary Pokémon. But Mew, critically, is a psychic type. Ditto is “normal.” It is as though the scientists succeeded in recreating the prima materia, but only in a purely physicalist sense. Ditto contains the genetic potential of all current life, but it does not generate new forms. It does not even learn new moves by itself, it must be taught. Science has apparently replicated the form and fertility of immemorial cosmic life, but not its potentiating vitality, its breath of life, its pneuma. I wonder where that pneuma went. Mewtwo, though not having begat novel lifeforms of its own, nevertheless expresses the pneuma in its thoughts and deeds. But maybe pneuma, as a formless concept, could only be expressed allegorically to the player as the enigmatic and varying being known as MissingNo. Revealingly, MissingNo is a Bird/Normal type Pokémon, birds being classical symbols of the spirit. Its cry upon encounter is the default “blank cry”: an unaffected cry of the male Nidoran (the only gendered Pokémon in the original release). But when MissingNo is viewed in the Pokédex, it makes the sound of a Rhydon, the first Pokémon ever designed; we could interpret this therefore as a reference to the voice of creative impulse. There is a caveat to discovering this: the player can only view the Pokedex entry if they have not seen a Cubone. This is another mythic peculiarity, as Cubone’s defining characteristic is its knowledge of loneliness, and its desire for reconciliation with its ancestors. If this sense of separation has never been known, only then can we “read” Missingno’s information, understand its primal utterance, and order it in our Pokédex-pantheon (as #000)

Curiously, Cubone is also host to a popular fan theory: that its missing mother is Kangaskhan. This is believed mainly because Cubone always pines for its perpetually absent mother, and Kangaskhans bear their young in their pouch, but the young are never seen independently. It is therefore supposed that when Kangaskhans die, their young don the skulls of their mothers and become Cubone. I have no strong opinion about this story, but MissingNo closes the circuit thematically. Just as MissingNo has ties to Cubone, its sibling Bar ‘M Bar mysteriously evolves into Kanghaskhan. Additionally, one of the appearances MissingNo can take is the “Ghost” sprite. In the main game, this sprite is only used for the ghost of Cubone’s mother in a unique encounter. Until a special item is used, this ghost isn’t affected by the player; with this guise MissingNo tells us it cannot be grasped.

4 Visions of MissingNo

In addition to the L-shaped white noise and the ghost, MissingNo can appear in two more ways. It can take the form of the fossils glimpsed in the Pewter Museum: a skeleton of Kabutops or a skeleton of Aerodactyl. These constellations of bones further suggest that MissingNo is an ancestral spirit. Kabutops is a water dwelling primordial life-form, whose development name meant “Atlantis,” and who symbolizes the origin of physical life from the first primal waters. Aerodactyl resembles a dragon or wyvern, an intermediary of heaven and earth. These two beasts, like the ghost, are no longer embodied. Though all 3 are potential symbols of the dead, they embody that sentiment differently. Kabutops comes from the water, Aerodactyl from the sky, and the ghost, as a veiled Marowak, would be terrestrial, but its image taken independently refers to the realm of the etheric.

To see these alternative forms, the player must have a certain letter in the 5th, 7th, or 9th slot of their character name: W for Kabutops, X for Aerodactyl, and Y for the ghost. The natural form of MissingNo gives us 4 forms, an apparently timeless property of visionary and mystic experience, from Ezekiel to mandala art and the platonic elements. In fact, there are over 150 such amplifications found in Carl Jung’s General Index, so it’s rather difficult to catch them all. Like many mythological quaternaries, 1 among the 4 is qualitatively exceptional. In this case, of course, that is the so-called “Normal” form, the fuzzy L-block which appears as a result of a much greater variety of player names. Though this natural form is less definite in criteria and appearance, it is actually more definite in its character. The other three forms take their base stats and moves from the last Pokémon in the party (a dittolike effect!); and their sprites, when viewed from the back, are taken from whichever Pokémon’s data was most recently accessed. So when these entities are in use by the player, they resemble something else entirely; they are phenomenologically reordered to resemble a known quantity. The natural form however, has a constant square-shaped sprite when viewed from the back. Though this form is exceptional among the 4, it is reductive to say that this is its “true” image: each of the 4 is a different capitulation of the same idea which itself is formless. Though there is one more peculiarity about the natural form! MissingNo. and Its Twin MissingNo’s natural form is identical with Bar ‘M Bar, as is its Pokédex number, leading many to believe that they were the same creature. However, there are many differences between them. Their height, weight, and stats are different, and they learn slightly different moves. Bar ‘M Bar does not cry like a male Nidoran, but instead sings a pitched-up version of the Zapdos call. This sound resembles birdsong with a background buzz indicating electricity. This pitch-shifted voice tells us that Bar M’ Bar resides even higher in the heavens than the sky-streaking legendary bird of thunder. Its “height” is also coincidentally tied in value with that of Rayquaza, a sacred serpent whose name means “firmament” and is the canonical lord of the skies. Another difference previously mentioned is Bar ‘M Bar’s unique ability to evolve into Kangaskhan. This happens at level 0, but if you glitch it to level 128, it can also evolve into Clefairy. Clefairy is a symbolically rich Pokémon as well; it was the main character of the original manga, and originally slated to be the main character of the anime. It is strongly indicated to be of extraterrestrial origin and is also plainly representative of the fairy kingdom, as indicated by its name and type. Additionally, it happens to be the Pokémon that Bill, a famous internet architect, accidentally transforms into as he is playing with time and space in order to construct a teleporter. We therefore can surmise that Clefairy relates to that which is alien: the alienation of the creature from the franchise, the alien origin of the species within the narrative, and the truly alien experience of inhabiting another body. This changing of bodies is perhaps what Bar ‘M Bar does when pushed past the realm of possibility, into level 128. There is of course a practical programming reason for the number 128, but it also happens to be double the number of possible codons in DNA. The “clef” in Clefairy means “musical key,” or in French simply “key.” Clefairy’s trademark move is metronome, which replicates most other Pokémon moves through the magic of synchronization. What would the world be like if this memetic sprite succeeded in its role as mascot of Pokémon? Would the world be all the more entranced?

When it comes to seeking an audience, Bar ‘M Bar is even wider in its accommodation than its sibling MissingNo. It can be encountered with any name at all – besides the preset options! Bar ‘M Bar’s own actual name, [][][][]M’[][][][] is certainly its most obvious difference. The bars on either side of the ‘M are determined by the actions of the player – Bulbapedia sums it up nicely:

It is most commonly known as 'M, since these are the only typographical characters in its name—its real name is impossible to produce with text, and some tiles in its name are not constant. It is also called 'M Block due to either the glitchy blocks next to its name or the Pokémon's boxy shape.

The first two tiles in [][][][] ‘M [][][][][]'s name depend on which sprite is occupying the spot where the player's Pokémon appears. In battle, the tiles on the left of its name will copy part of the sprite in the bottom-left corner of the screen (the player's Pokémon), while the block on the right will copy part of the sprite in the upper-right corner of the screen (the opponent's Pokémon). Out of battle, the blocks in its name will change depending on the player's location.

We know that MissingNo’s name is constant, and its form is undefined, a result of the player’s bestowed name. On the other hand, Bar ‘M Bar is a definite outcome for any bestowed name, but its own name is defined by the player! Yet it always retains the ‘M in the middle, which is tempting to interpret as the conjunction n’ (and). It looks as though Bar ‘M Bar’s name is something like “This n’ That.” And indeed, that’s what the sprites which comprise the bars draw from: the player’s Pokémon and the opponent’s Pokémon. The fact that these two glitchy blocks are separated by something close to “and” is a beautiful detail. It takes these two oppositional beings and phrases them both, but does so with the separation intact. If it lacked the ‘M between the two samples it would give a different impression. It is the difference between hendiadys (good and ready) and a modified adjective (well ready). It acknowledges that the two things are distinct and in concert, yet they are termed by Bar ‘M Bar in a single body. There is an endless mystery surrounding the mythological motif of 2-in-1, but it is often explored in alchemy and Jungian psychology through the image of the coniunctio, the holy marriage, the reconciliation of opposites.

Can we even say that Bar ‘M Bar is a single entity? It certainly has the strong dual aspect of its twin, MissingNo. Are these two glitch Pokémon the same or not? In the coding of the game, they are not. None of MissingNo’s forms share the constitution of Bar ‘M Bar. Yet they are defined in the Pokédex – the pantheon of the player’s understanding – in the same place, #000, and therein utter the same cry (Rhydon’s). They share an identical sprite and learn nearly identical moves. They cause the same glitch effects to occur in game. The strongest evidence for seeing them as representations of the same essence is in popular conception: Bar ‘M Bar is frequently referred to as MissingNo, and was the first of many other glitch Pokémon subsumed under the generic description of “MissingNo.” It is almost technical trivia to separate them. And most tellingly for the sake of this investigation, they complete each other’s symbolism. So, they are discrete entities AND they aren’t. The mystery of the coniunctio is thus further embodied in this dual being. The Lingering Presence Now that we’ve outlined the taxonomy of MissingNo+, we can begin to look at the consequences. The two most well-known effects of meeting MissingNo are the Item Duplication Glitch and the Hall of Fame glitch. Item duplication occurs after any encounter with MissingNo or Bar ‘M Bar, regardless of whether the player has fled, caught the creature, or knocked it out. When examining the bag after the battle, the player will find that the 6th item in their inventory has been increased by 128 (although this does not occur if the value is already over 128). Given that a player can reorder their inventory at will, this was a famous exploit for getting hundreds of Rare Candies in order to quickly max out any Pokémon’s level, or generating 128 Master Balls ensuring the capture of any creature you meet from then on. Indeed, this is the most common reason for performing the old man glitch, and likely the critical factor in MissingNo’s renown. And what fuel for the legend: a bizarre seaside vision that grants a wish. Another popular exploit is duplicated fossils, normally given only once per game, so that you could resurrect 100 Kabuto, Omanyte, or Aerodactyl. But any item is fair game: you could effectively wish for infinite wealth, health, lives, moves, defense, speed, power, whatever. You hooked the magic fish, what you do with it is up to you.

The experience also corrupts your Hall of Fame data, replacing some of the images with blocks of static, and scrambling names and values of your champion Pokémon. This is a largely inconsequential effect, but it has symbolic weight. Each Pokémon that exists is a symbol of some kind, representing an attitude, or an attribute, and as you go along meeting them and incorporating them into yourself, they accumulate further personal meanings. So consciously or unconsciously, the Pokémon that accompany you to your final battle are in some sense a mirror of the player: they represent your priorities, values, and appreciations. These are the ones canonized by the game in the Hall of Fame. MissingNo then transforms this composite irreparably. This act can be seen a psychic realignment of the player-character.

Summary

Let’s imagine the story of meeting MissingNo as a fairly tale. The protagonist, Red, talks to an Old Man at the edge of town who shows him how to catch a worm. Next, Red flies through the skies to a volcanic island. There on the Eastern shore of the island, he swims the coast. Attracted by his name, some number of foreign beasts appear before him, culminating in the appearance of a totally unexpected entity which defies easy categorization (though there are partial physical descriptions in some versions of the story). He then defeats, captures, or flees from the apparition. Then looking in his bag, he finds some object or capacity of his has been magnified to a superhuman extent. Finally, we find that some of his major psychic precepts have been mysteriously and radically altered for evermore.

So what then what was the encounter? An alien? A deity or holy ghost? The pneuma which animates life? Is it an unconscious complex made manifest? A psychotic break? The disorienting eruption of the Real? Is it a highly coherent and synchronous glitch-experience, or a pareidoliac imprint in static? I don’t believe that any of these answers satisfy in themselves. Like the images of MissingNo, the interpretations are interdependent, forming points along the circumference of a subject whose middle cannot be approached by the intellect. What is easier to parse is the influence of MissingNo on the fanbase. MissingNo is so famous as a glitch that it has become the common shorthand for any glitch Pokémon throughout the series. MissingNo and Bar ‘M Bar have inspired not only countless tall tales, but tons of fiction, fanart, merch, and a featured article on Bulbapedia. Using our imagination, it is rather easy to place MissingNo into the narrative context of the game, conceptualizing it any of the above ways. As much as this being seems keen to disrupt our in-game immersion, it seems equally willing to stride across our imagination, as though it were walking a bridge leading into the world of Pokémon, or our own reality, or wherever its place of origin.

#pokemon #pokemon rgb #pokemon gen 1 #missingno #glitch pokemon #pokemon psychology #alchemy #prima materia #pneuma #old man glitch #pokemon myth #pokemon creepypasta #creepypasta #spooky #pokemon theory #mew

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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How Wearing An Apple Watch Has Allowed Me to Disconnect

2018 was the year we started taking our screen time seriously. We didn’t quite reclaim our lives back from our smartphones, but we started talking about it: Google introduced Digital Wellbeing, Instagram rolled out an activity dashboard that sends self-policing push notifications, and with iOS 12, Apple unveiled Screen Time, an update that gives users every instrument they need to tame their iPhone addiction.

The numbers that these tools showed made me increasingly queasy about my own tech consumption. My iPhone comes with me into the gym, into the bathroom stall and into my bed. It’s often the first thing I reach for when I open my eyes each morning, and sometimes it’s the final thing I see before I close them at night. For a long time, I believed that introducing new gadgets into my life would only make my Internet obsession worse; wearable tech seemed like a step too far towards affirming my cyborg identity.

However, when Apple sends you an Apple Watch Series 4 to trial over a weekend in Whistler Village, you swallow your scepticism. I’ve been wearing my Apple Watch for over a month now, and its quick ability to become an integral part of my life has shocked me: I now track my activity, set my pasta timers, respond to notifications, play my podcasts, pay for groceries, check the weather, answer the phone and find my Uber driver all on my wrist. Which, rather than increasing my daily digital “Time Spent” numbers, has allowed me to start ignoring my smartphone almost altogether.

Here’s how that works: when my iPhone vibrates or I see its screen light up, I reach for it. I intend to check a single notification, but instead, I click Instagram and enter an endless void of dog videos, breakfast photos and selfies of people I haven’t spoken to since high school. With the Apple Watch, I see the notification, hit dismiss and continue on with whatever soul-fulfilling activity I’m supposed to be engaging with IRL.

Often, the activities that suffer most at the hand of my iPhone addiction are adventure related. I may be in an exciting new city or surrounded by breathtaking nature, but I’ll still find myself staring down at my phone screen, scrolling until I see something that sparks joy. That’s what made Whistler the perfect place to trial the Apple Watch Series 4 for the first time: I realized that when I stop reaching for my smartphone, I can finally enjoy being in the moment. And, with the Apple Watch tracking my health and fitness data, I can actually see how those moments on the trails, in the studio and on the slopes are benefiting my mind and body.

The Apple Watch hasn’t made my iPhone entirely obsolete—I still needed that pocket-sized device to snap photos of the vast mountain landscapes and snow-covered trees—but it’s come awfully close. Here’s what I learned about the device after testing it through three different activities:

Photography by Mirae Campbell

Photography by Meghan Mckenna

Photography by Mirae Campbell

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Apple Watch on the Slopes

Wearing my Apple Watch up the mountain means I’m far less likely to drop my iPhone off the chair lift when I pull it out of my snowpants to check my notifications or try to locate a lost friend. (The watch’s walkie talkie function is very handy for slope stragglers like me.) Plus, the Apple Watch tracks skiing and snowboarding just like any other fitness activity: using the app snoww, I was able to accurately track my elevation descent, horizontal distance, average speed, and max speed. And, at the end of the day, I was able to compare my stats against friends on the app — at which point I got to brag about being second fastest on the daily leaderboard.

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Apple Watch on the Trails

Automatic Workout Detection, a new feature to watch OS 5, alerts Apple Watch wearers to select a workout when it notices you’re on the move. I don’t have to be sprinting up a hill for the device to catch me working out: when I’m headed on a leisurely outdoor walk through the woods, it reminds me to log the activity. And, even when I forget, the watch gives me credit for an exercise that’s already done.

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Apple Watch in the Studio

Yoga is a new native workout-recording app that was introduced with watchOS 5. Typically, a phone-free yoga studio is the only place I can successfully disconnect—so I was hesitant to use an Apple Watch in this space. The ability to track calories burned and monitor my heartbeats per minute (BPM), however, gave me new insights into how my body responds to activity. At the end of the session, I meditated with the Breathe app, a built-in feature of the watch that has made me increasingly aware of my breathing habits. With the app, I’m reminded to set aside a few moments each day to mindfully sit with my breath. It’s practically a yoga class on my wrist.

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