#tldr. missingno is a fucked up glitch pokemon that happens when something in the pokemon-to-data transfer malfunctions essentially

[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