#indiana state university | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

darkclouds-rainsounds · 4 months

Text

Additional ?????????? Lore

This is mostly meta stuff, as in specifically that of why ?????????? looks the way it does as well as several things about what went into creating it.

•Fukakai's hair being tied with a claw clip is a subtle reference to ウ.4's sprite, but with an orange color color-picked and adjusted from the orange in missingno.'s sprite. (ウ.4 left, Missingno. right)

The reason for this is that Fukakai was going to have been a ウ.4 glitch instead of ウ$ (F4) but it couldn't learn metronome. However, this turned out to be fortunate because, had I decided to go with ウ.4 instead, I wouldn't have ever found out about ウ$ (F4) being able to evolve into missingno. Because even before I decided to look into pokemon rby glitches, Fukakai was entirely intended to be a missingno., but after revisiting it, I decided to have it be more innately destructive since missingno. is typically harmless.

I wanted a character that means no harm and doesn't purposefully hurt anyone, who has literal world ending capabilities yet doesn't even understand it nor remembers that it's capable of doing it just by virtue of it existing. Fukakai's outfit is actually a holdover from before I did my research, hence the ocean wave patterned over-shirt. (The Pachirisu mask doesn't reference anything, it just came to me spontaneously and I liked the aesthetic of it enough to just give it to Fukakai)

•The name of Fukakai's Porygon-Z "Fubar" is directly taken from an acronym in military slang that means "fucked up beyond all recognition". Youkou is the one who decidedly gave her own personal nickname to Fukakai's incredibly glitchy-looking Porygon-Z, not to be mean, but in the same jokey manner some people refer to their pets with nicknames like "little bastard man" or even just name a cat with big blue eyes "gloop".

•The thing is, the acronym "fubar" possibly evolved into the term "foobar" after soldiers came back from World War II and enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and said word means this:

“The terms foobar (/ˈfuːbɑːr/), foo, bar, baz, and others are used as metasyntactic variables and placeholder names in computer programming or computer-related documentation. They have been used to name entities such as variables, functions, and commands whose exact identity is unimportant and serve only to demonstrate a concept.”

•Fukakai's nickname (不可解) means “mystery; baffling; inexplicable; incomprehensible”. An appropriate nickname given just what Fukakai is.

•Fukakai being able to just find pokemon that don't exist in the world as we know it pertains only to beta pokemon. Fakemon are a no go on my part. Fukakai being able to find beta pokemon and its reaction to them being as though these completely unrecorded (or recorded but look nothing like what Fukakai found, like in the instance of the beta Togekiss) pokemon are normal extends even to legendaries.

°Of course, as the post said, Fukakai hasn't nor will see Arceus in Their true, untainted form since if that event were to ever occur, that means Fukakai is about to get smote from existence. However, Fukakai is able to just find and roughly replicate the same situation it pulled with the beta Togekiss with Kimairan.

(Only drawing I've got. Sorry.)

⸻⸻⸻⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

Youkou gapes at the six-legged orange and yellow pokemon with a mix of apprehension and bafflement of just what her friend has found.

The towering pokemon's existence feels distinctly off yet deeply intertwined with the world itself; an existence that demands reverence. They merely stare down at young woman before it. Whether they don't notice or simply do not care, not just their appearance, but their very being is striking a foreign and inexplicable fear into this woman's heart.

Finally, Youkou manages to force herself to look away from this pokemon that's towering high above the trees and even the buildings, to Fukakai standing in front of said anomalous pokemon.

She tries to keep her voice steady when she speaks, afraid that if her fear is evident whatever pokemon (she hopes that this is a pokemon) this is will react in a manner that could spell horrific destruction.

“Fukakai... what is this...?”

〈Giratina〉

Her mind freezes the instant she processes that information. All fear she had towards this pokemon that feels alien yet also like it belongs here dissipates almost as quickly.

Giratina. A legendary said to exist on the reverse side of our world that was seen during the whole Team Galactic mess a few years back and was temporarily caught and studied. Youkou isn't the most interested in mythology, but she's at least pretty sure Giratina is more than such legendaries like Kyogre or Lugia.

Giratina is a God. A very powerful one.

And this? This isn't Giratina. This looks nothing like the predominantly black and red draconic— sometimes snake-like(?)— deity that she's seen in the news when that whole debacle transpired.

She hasn't realized she'd been staring blankly at Fukakai for who knows how long until said person tilts its head to the side and raises its hands to begin signing again, its visible eye narrowed just slightly in what Youkou perceives to be worry.

Before Fukakai can begin signing, Youkou cuts it off, trying to appear as if she wasn't just standing there zoned out.

“O-Oh! Uh.... That's very interesting...! And bizarre...” She trails off, looking away from Fukakai for only a moment before her gaze snaps back to it.

“But um...”

She's unsure how to put this— especially given that the pokemon that Fukakai claims to be Giratina is still right there— and she doesn't want to risk offending or angering it by saying that it isn't Giratina.

Fukakai tilts its head to the other side in waiting of what its friend is going to say. At the same time it does that, a relatively quiet sound akin to crackling and static comes from Fukakai, almost as if it were making an inquisitive sound.

Youkou starts at the sound— not startled by the sound itself, but of feeling that she's run out of time to formulate some manner of words that implies in the gentlest of ways that this pokemon before her isn't what her friend claims it to be.

“U-Um! Nothing! Nevermind. But... could you perhaps put this pokemon back where you found it? Please?”

She hadn't intended for her words to sound that fearfully desperate, but she'd really rather not get smited or witness anyone get smited by this pokemon whose very essence feels overwhelming that she now understands feels is belonging to a God. Giratina or not, this pokemon shouldn't just be here.

Fukakai looks levelly at Youkou and gives a plain response of〈Okay〉.

The orange and yellow pokemon finally looks away from Youkou, now peering down at Fukakai who had turned around and pat it on one of their six legs.

Their golden eyes meet Fukakai's void-like own and seemingly, without any form of communication, looks away and begins moving.

Youkou expected it to either just walk away or maybe even take off in flight (even though she worried greatly for her friend who would certainly get hurt from being so close if it did decide to fly away), but she hadn't expected it to open some kind of ethereal portal out of nowhere and walk into it.

Almost as soon as it completely passed through this portal of celestial light, it closed leaving not a single trace a pokemon as immense as that were ever there.

“Fukakai.” Youkou says, or moreso states, her tone noticeably devoid of the formal cadence of how she usually speaks. Now no longer tense that the pokemon that was supposedly Giratina is gone.

The very person whose given name means inexplicable turns back around and faces the person who addressed it.

It blinks at its friend once in silent questioning.

“What the fuck.”

⸻⸻⸻⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺⸺

{It should be explicitly noted that Youkou is a very polite person who has very good manners. For those that know, Japanese (or Kantonian?) comes in different levels of politeness. If one were to rank that politeness from most to least, 1 to 5, Youkou on average speaks at a 4 and rarely ever dips to a 3. The end of this is a 1.}

Basically, my headcanon is that if Kimairan does exist, it's in an alternate universe where Giratina started out as looking like that instead of the black and red dragon that we know. That the Giratina in the "main world" and pretty much in almost all worlds, looks like what we recognize as Giratina and has always looked that way since creation whereas a being like Kimairan exists in some far far off universe so very disconnected from any "normal" universe that it's a complete mystery how they could end up in a "main world". Additionally, these same very distant disconnected worlds that conceivably shouldn't exist and whose existence are unknown to all but Arceus Themself (yes this includes the Creation Trio) are where the other beta pokemon come from.

°It's difficult for me to put into words on my own, but @/splattermouth's (well, snapvalentine but it's the same person) ideas for how the pokemon world itself functions and that it's built upon layers upon layers of itself with each iteration being further buried underneath the next as Arceus tries to perfect Their creation is a similar feeling descriptor to where these distant universes are and why they're so disconnected. It's not 1:1 but it feels close enough to be cited as a coherent descriptor.

“Reality is in a constant state of being mended and refined and the knowledge that it’s constantly, and has always been, “hanging by a thread” as a human would likely put it, would strike unfathomable horror into the depths of anyone’s soul.”

This part of Fukakai’s introductory post is a reference to this.

Just replace the text labeling the tiny load-bearing piece with “Arceus” and the text labeling everything being upheld by it “literally the entire pokemon multiverse”.

The thing about Arceus appearing like Their canon design as opposed to Their beta one to people because people expect Them to look like the former— that it's the appearance that people and most pokemon associate with Arceus and as a result, is what their brain subconsciously defaults to if they were to ever gaze upon Them— is a reference to an old comic that was on tumblr some years ago (before 2020) that was a bit meta in how humanity views the personification of death.

In that comic, someone who recently died(?) met death and on a whim, asked it (or was maybe musing aloud?) why it actually looked like the stereotypical grim reaper that humans interpret death to look like. Just because death is interpreted that way by people doesn't inherently mean that's what it actually looks like if you were to ever meet it in person, so for it to in real life look like one of the most popular depictions of it is very peculiar.

Death answers that the reason it looks like the grim reaper is because the person in question highly associates that depiction with death even if they didn't consciously realize it.

Death then says that its appearance is different to other people whose culture's depictions of death are different than "skeleton in black robes maybe holding a scythe".

Arceus' appearance is that combined with angels and how the Ezekielian ones look to the stereotypical "blonde hair, halo above head, white wings on back, white robes" depiction of angels.

Because not all angels look like blazing golden rings with far too many eyes and wings, that's only the way angels look in the Book of Ezekiel. Human-like angels are said to exist, but for the sake of Arceus in my interpretation of Their appearance, I discard that and instead have it where Ezekielian angels are the "true" appearance of angels and the human-like appearance— rather the popularized version of that appearance— is humanity's attempt to comprehend the unfathomable.

To take the main components of what they saw (golden rings = halo, wings being diminished to only two) and make it more palatable to themselves and able to be shared amongst each other without revulsion and fear. Even an attempt at accurately interpreting what the "true" form of angels looks like pales largely in comparison, so why not stylize it? The main components are still there, so it's still evocative of an angel and gets the message across.

#【𝙿 𝚁 𝙸 𝚂 𝙼】#❔fukakai #🌸youkou #this has nothing to do w fukakai but re: the thing about the universe being in a constant state of breaking and being fixed just in time #had me realize ''oh‚ volo was trying to do some indiana jones level switch w/o even realizing that's what he was setting himself up for''#and given what happens in indiana jones w that iconic scene... 😬

18 notes · View notes