#thank you all for indulging my insanity i am very autistic about this.

[drifloonz]

PLEASE CONTINUE RAMBLING ABT MISSINGNO I WANNA HEAR MORE OF UR THOUGHTSSS

basically, the missingno ramble came about bc i always thought that initially, pokemon were always supposed to be able to be turned into data and shit. eg, how pokeballs even work, how the pc works, how trading works, etc.

this is kind of long ( not really but a few paragraphs ( nevermind i made it longer. ) ) so im gunna put it under a readmore just so i dont irritate ppl in whatever tags i put this in

idk if theres evidence for this, it just feels like pokemon implied that more and has been recently backtracking and going "oh no theyre not actually like DATA lol." and kind of retconning it. but maybe im pulling all of this out my ass but idk it felt early gen pokemon was much more in that sort of direction. there were a lot of different directions in early gen pokemon in general, i feel

ANYWAYS given that i subscribe to that more than whatever theyre doing with the canon explanations for shit now ( also not helped by my general fascination with technology, ai, and glitches esp in fiction and how interesting they are if written well ), i think missingno is just . a glitched pokemon. which obviously. but. Like. it used to be a pokemon. they can be made easily if something fucks up in the data transfer from physical to pokeball or pc or during trading or something like that.

well, maybe not easily- i imagine missingnos are only made from particularly bad cases of this. complete malfunctions and breaks, probably. which would also be why missingno and glitch pokemon like the bad egg, M', female symbol, ? symbol, whatever other ones you can think of were much more prominent early gen and pittered out more in later games ( not entirely obviously, but yknow ) - technology advanced more and became more secure so these types of things happened less often.

and i think in terms of possible mew clone, they are clones of mew that could not turn into ditto because an error happened technologically. instead of biologically/physically, which is how ditto wouldve been made. why are they in the shore? who knows. maybe theyre kind of thoughtless and just somehow get physically dumped into the cinnabar shore. god knows why its kind of hard to integrate game glitch to actual story/lore but by god im doing it.

anyways. because of this in strangled red, i think missingno isnt an all powerful entity. i think its just something that fills miki's corpse with garbage data and puppets her around like a zombie. which would be oddly fitting for a pokemon that i think could be caused by a trading fiasco or other technological malfunctions that happen to pokemon in those sorts of things.

miki just got the worse of it physically, not glitch-wise. she just died. which, at least she got to go out and not be in eternal limbo. until, well, steven stepped in, but who knows if shes even sentient enough or if her soul is even in missingno-ified miki at all. i think its slightly there, just a fragment of it- but its mostly a husk.

when the trading incident happened, i imagine that if there's an error the failsafe in whatever trading mech you use immediately sends the pokemon back to the original trainers, but something screwed up in the wiring so she likely turned physical at the wrong time while still in the trading tube, which then ended up with the wires being wrapped around her neck, or maybe even stabbing into it.

i like to think in the strangled red universe it's a not very common thing that maybe even was the first or only reported incident. steven and mike just got extremely unlucky.

... which probably did not help stevens rage about the incident, losing his prized unique charizard who could evolve faster than any charmander ever has, and tank supereffective damage easily amongst other things and to the fact that it probably only happened to him. or at minimum a few other people ever.

why does steven know about missingno? likely tales when he was in cinnabar during his original journey about it. strangled red is a year or so before the canon story but i doubt the mewtwo thing happened exactly a year before reds story, so missingno still being there. yknow. makes sense if you think it exists like how ditto does. ( failed mew clone ) .

the only reason missingno has power is because it is a glitch, it is corruption, physicalized - in a way it was not meant to be even further than how a glitch is. pokemon can turn into data. you can see how that'd work. anything that can be digitized in the pokemon world, it has power over. i imagine something thats meant to be there like a normal pokemon or human would get corrupted by it if it touched or remained in an area too long, or if it were commanded to attack. which is why missingnos in universe have insane levels, odd or stolen cries ( along with the fact some of them just used to be a normal pokemon likely ), and are physically just a jumble of data or taking images from random pokemons appearances, and even the skeletons or ghosts of them.

ironically they are like miki, but if miki after the incident corrupted digitally and physically, and went into a state of limbo instead of outright just dying due to technical malfunctions. they probably barely remember their former lives or what they were supposed to be and become very mindless.

i also think this has interesting implications for the trade incident if it ever happened again with pokemon with trade evolutions. i don't think they'd die, i think they'd become corrupted in a similar but different way to missingno - like an unintentional and glitchy evolution akin to porygon-z.

anyways.

steven is desperate for anything and everything to bring her back, and maybe tried multiple methods beforehand if you think he was that desperate, but hey. missingno worked. even if miki's just a puppeted corpse being controlled by a mindless thing that used to be a pokemon. who is ironically, controlling a corpse of a pokemon.

#wispy chatters #strangled red miki #headcanons #missingno #strangled red steven #thank you all for indulging my insanity i am very autistic about this. #tldr. missingno is a fucked up glitch pokemon that happens when something in the pokemon-to-data transfer malfunctions essentially #they get stuck in eternal limbo and kind of are zombies but like... digitalized glitchy zombies. that have barely any memory of who they ar #and barely any consciousness

[cult-of-the-eye]

How's ur um. Horror. Perchance even in comic form

horror comic rant part 3 electric boogalee:

and folks we are back again, i am answering these during my 5 minute study breaks (love u pomodoro) and it is definitely a contributing factor to keeping me going. i love the way u asked this btw

school bus graveyard:

buckle up people you are in for a RIDE

so this is another female main character who is joining my list of all time favs oh my god i love her

her name's ashlyn (ash) and she is so fucking cool, she does ballet, she keeps her ginger hair in long ass plaits, she is horrifically bendy, she keeps cool under pressure, she struggles to communicate her feelings, she low key hates people, but she trauma bonds with a group of people who somehow become her found family, she's most likely autistic (my own headcanon for her but like you'll see)

i don't think its a romance but they're hinting at one btw ash and this other guy (aiden) and its very black cat x golden retriever vibes

yeah anyway so ash gets put into a study group with like 6 other people who are all so interesting in their own ways

you got tyler and taylor - twins who are fiercely protective and supportive of each other, taylor is super emotionally skilled, she is able to get the group to calm down etc etc, tyler is really very hot headed and not very nice at first but then he gets better

it's revealed that their dad passed away and since then, their mum has been struggling with long term mental health issues and some damage to her memory, where she'll periodically forget that her husband died, so tyler took it upon himself to sort of be the adult and take care of everyone

then you got ben and aiden who are cousins, aiden is fucking insane i love him, he is wildly extroverted but in a low key uncanny way, he's constantly grinning and it's clear from the start that he's some sort of thrill seeker who is pretty much doing things for the plot and has no regard for his own safety or wellbeing (his character makes me froth at the mouth)

(we later find out a bit more about his backstory, hinting at a history of depression and suicidal thoughts, and when he "dies" at one point, his final words are "so that's what it feels like" which is AAAAAAAARGH)

and then we got aiden who doesn't speak, he's kind of a gentle giant, he sticks closely with aiden and he seems really sweet (he's sort of the medic of the group)

we find out that he was bullied in his previous school cause he was really into singing even though he looked like a "tough guy", eventually he was horrifically beaten up and then choked, which damaged his vocal chords, so he stopped speaking cause he didn't like the way his voice sounded

we've also got logan who we don't know much about, we know he's the shy, nerdy sort, he got bullied and forced to do other people's homework, he lives with his grandparents and works at their flower shop but he's also an amazing shot with a gun so like...

(there is plot but i may make that into another post cause this is so long)

once again, thank you so much for indulging me, this has gotten me through my studying lol

#answered asks #horror comics

[scrawnytreedemon]

Can’t sleep, mind going precisely 56 miles an hour, so I think I’ll finally get around to writing this.

Couples days back, I went ahead and finally psyched myself up to do the Zant bossfight.

Because I’d picked up where I’d left off yesterday, which was just before the boss room, obviously I was taken back to the beginning of the area. This gave the whole ordeal a trek, if a short one, what with the Palace of Twilight’s laughable length, and me more time to think.

I didn’t want to do this.

It sounds stupid, but I really didn’t want to do this. I’d cried the day before trying to psych myself up and failing, and I’d cried then, before the boss door, stalling by sweeping away the crystal-fog as best I could-- A meagre attempt at housekeeping, and a futile one. Of course I couldn’t. This isn’t that sort of game. This isn’t a game for failed attempts at kindness, at least trying to clean this awful, awful place for an awful, awful man going through awful, awful things. I was supposed to be a hero.

Heroes don’t make beds.

They don’t wash dishes, or hang laundry, or hold a rival’s hand,

They kill.

The trek didn’t stop past the door, either.

We still had to walk up the stairs. To the throne.

To him.

And I was there, laugh-crying, wishing I didn’t have to. That I could skip this pathetic ordeal.

I tried to turn around and leave.

Despite it only looking like a larger one of the many, many doors we’ve passed through this awful, nonsensical, poorly-designed excuse for a palace that no one could ever live in, it didn’t budge. There wasn’t any turning back. I had to go forward, because this is an action game, and violence is key.

The game takes the reigns. Link walks up to the throne, sword drawn, despite my deliberate decision to sheathe it. The narrative begins again. Midna sneers, and throws a taunt at him.

Zant sits, and smiles. Smiles like he thinks he still has some form of control, or knows full well he’s lost it.

You know, when I was working through the Palace of Twilight, I’d come to the realisation that... Zant locked himself in the throneroom. From the outside. Logistically, despite the good laugh I had over this guy locking himself in from the fucking outside, where his opponents can grab the key, he could get out easily-- teleportation and all. But even that aside, it still spoke to a level of hasty panic, that he would even keep the key outside, behind a waterfall of yet more shitty fog-crytals in the hopes that would deter them. Deter us.

How long had the guy been here, alone in that room?

We all know what happens next. Despite this being my first playthrough, I’ve probably seen this cutscene a dozen times. Zant has what amounts to an overly-dramatised autistic meltdown expositing himself and his motivations. That he was upset and felt like everything he’d worked for had been taken away from him. That he was angry, angry and fed up of being relegated to a half-existence. Midna retorts, Zant wails some more.

What gets me is that, when Ganondorf visits him, engulfs him in this flaming ball of fucked-magical-fuckery, he just. Stares. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything. Ganondorf speaks as though he’s already decided that, yes, you will do, we will make a pact and rule Everything together; I will live on through you.

Did Zant even agree to this?

I think, subconsciously or not, he accepted it, but it begs the question of whether or not Zant was capable enough to partake in it.

Whatever the answer, he’s clearly not capable enough to partake in this. This fight.

It’s laughable, that I’m expected to find victory in this.

The fight was a fucking slog, 90% of the time. Some of these boss-battles I hadn’t played in nearly two years thanks to the impromptu hiatuses I’m so fond of taking, so I didn’t know what the fuck I was meant to be doing half the time-- And when I did, it lagged to shit everytime this poor bastard fired projectiles, because I was playing on the gamepad, because why on earth would I play this on the goddamn TV? It was a sad, pitiful encounter that I had to laugh my way through and also mumble “what the fuck“ on several occasions because I guess somebody at Nintendo ate cheese before bed and the dev team were so desperate to patch something together for this guy’s sudden crisis that they threw it in-- I’m obviously having a good laugh, but What The Fuck.

I knock the guy down in the last phase of the battle, the only one where he isn’t mimicking something else and dizzies himself spinning like a hyperactive child, and the game takes the reigns again. Midna prepares her hair. I look away-- I’ve seen it before, many times before, and it’s cartoonishly grotesque for a game that relies heavily on somber semi-realism. Midna has her own crisis-- And yeah, yeah bossbabe, I feel it.

It cuts back, and there’s a Heart Container on the guy’s throne.

I.

I killed a guy, and now I’m collecting his lifeforce. I stormed into the bunged-up attempt of a fortress conjured up as a last defense by a man who’s fallen head-first into insanity, tore through any meagre security measure like butter, murder the guy when he’s having an episode, he dies a fucked up death, and then I collect his lifeforce.

Is that fucked up or what?

For all of Zelda’s endless violence, rarely do you actually kill “people.“ It’s the kind of stuff reserved for the end, for Ganondorf, or some other corrupted nigh-demigod on the brink of losing their humanity, or never having possessed it.

We kill Zant.

Zant barely puts up a fight, and we kill him. Zant gets summoned from the netherworld by Ganondorf in Hyrule Warriors; we put him there in the first place.

If we were to view this from a literal, like this shit actually happened and these characters are to be held accountable standpoint, then what we did was justified-- If not wholly, then mostly. Zant got power-hungry, committed what amounts to a bio-terroristic coup on the government, disfigured his rival, a woman notorious for her beauty, then proceeded to attempt the same thing with Hyrule, leading to the indirect death of at least the people who got transfigured into Shadow-Beasts in Kakariko, and attacks you first, then yeah, no biggie?

But I’ll be fucking real with you chief, I don’t find it... I don’t know, persuasive? Effective? Compelling, would be the best word, to think of it that way?

What Zant is, is a narrative tool. One that was set up to be this big, bad interloper who you need to Take Down and Save Everything, as per usual Zelda format. The justification for why we should hate him, if I’m going to be honest, feels contrived, most of the time. He does some bad thing off-screen, Midna gets pissed, Midna and everyone within a 12-mile radius explains why we should be pissed in a way that often feels borderline developer-hand-y-- And that’s. Well that’s how Zelda usually is.

It’s justification to commit violence.

--To be clear, I don’t say this in a political sense. I mean it in the very literal “hit/kill a guy“ sense. And in all honesty, that’s kinda inherent to the ethos of action games. We enjoy catharsis-- We enjoy taking down big things, it’s satisfying! I’ve played a little Hyrule Warriors-- Loved the feel of it. Violence is inherent to even the most benign of action games, and it is what it is.

Where it falls short for me, is that with Zant, I don’t feel like I’m taking down some great foe that I should justifiably hate.

I feel like I’m a clearly more equipped person breaking into a room, and bludgeoning a mentally ill person.

I’m autistic. I may slot in easier to NT society than most, but I am autistic, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to see something I’ve fucking gone through be used carelessly as flavour for a prelude to violence. I have meltdowns. They’re relatively rare, and mostly in my room, alone, but I’ve also experienced one out in public. It was only sobbing, but there’s a special kind of horror, of humilation in knowing other people, strangers, family, what have you, are seeing it, and all you can think is how much you failed.

I can’t fully articulate why I cried so much during this, quite frankly, menial ordeal. I’m half-embarrassed to even talk about it-- Because then that means caring too much, and I can’t care too much over a poorly-justified character that wasn’t even intended to be sympathised with and that most of the fandom laughs at. And I can’t say I blame them.

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to the ever-present pity; some strange, childish commiseration I’d indulged in ever since I was six and cooing over Bowser and how awful everything was for him, that despite my continuous efforts, I can’t ever seem to explain.

I didn’t like the Zant fight. It felt empty,

And all did was sweep cobwebs and try to turn back.

#scrawny rambles #scrawny speaks #tloz #twilight princess #zant #back at it again with anotherhgkjhgjkhgkhj #thoughts #i'm tired of how violence is used to handle everything i guess #i feel like i'm walking around with a hammer wanting to buils a little shed and maybe set it down and make soup and hand it out #but the game goes NO bludgeoning ONLY you MUST KILL ALL THE WRONGDOERS VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY WAY-- #cAN WE MAYBE??? N O T?? FOR ONCE??? #AGAIN to get onto another thing. fuckign. mnish cap. and how e/zlo i n s i s t s the only thing to do about v/aati is kill him #you know. #his child student. that HE TUTORED WHAT THE FU C K #AND EVERYONE??? THINKS IT'S F I N E?? #(slashes employed so it doesn't show up in those tagshdjjhgjkhg) #BUT YEAH WHAT EVEN #i suppose another part of this is just how. violence is glorified so much even in everyday culture. even in progressive circles. #[especially in progressive circles.] #ugh. god i really am a soppy little lawful good pacifist aren't i??? #hhgjhfjgjl #it's 12am forgive any typos