#loremaker mitzi

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

But, like, what *are* the glitches?

[February 1 2023]

{Mitzi:}

time to talk about a recent revelation:

I Know What The Glitches Are

{Krizste:}

go on///

{Trollkitten:}

rubs hands together and chuckles evilly

{Mitzi:}

like, i should have asked this question before, shouldn’t i. they’ve been a big part of tpp for almost as long as i’ve been into tpp, but i never really thought about, like, what they were

where they came from, why they exist, why they’re Like That

i think i just unconsciously assumed they were errors in the construction of reality or something, and never paid them much heed

but then haji said a thing, and i started connecting dots

some metaphysical background. every universe has its own rules, yeah? works in slightly different ways, has slightly different game mechanics physical laws

glitchiness - the effect the glitches have on the world, as distinct from the glitchstuff itself - is what happens when you try to run software from universe a on universe b’s system, and that might not even be a metaphor

things just… don’t work quite the same way, and the glitchy entity/effect is constantly bashing into the universe, trying to work through its rules and just failing. it can be as minor as a weirdly-coloured object, but if the contrast is bad enough, you get missingno

so like, whenever someone goes out wandering the multiverse and visits a reality other than their own… they’re a little glitchy. odd numbers of fingers, wrongly-pitched voices, things like that

but it’s never, like, too bad, at least around the pokemultiverse where realities tend to run on pretty similar lines. and it usually wears off, too, as the universe and its visitor get used to each other

or if you’re bullshit omnipotent like the voices you could just whack the universe until it works the way you want it to, but they’re an exception to literally everything

so long as you’re coming from a world of your own, you can usually reach an accord

s o l o n g a s y o u ‘ r e c o m i n g f r o m a w o r l d o f y o u r o w n

because, see, here’s the thing about the void between the universes. it devours

it eats away at everything that passes through it - it eats away at the voices, that’s how overpowering it is. spend enough time in the void, and you’ll gradually slip away

all the rules that used to define you just… disappear. it gets harder and harder to fit into - any reality, there’s so much less of you than the world expects

{Trollkitten:}

ooooo

{Newbie:}

...i think i see where you're going with this 👀

{Mitzi:}

sometimes you can claw your way up the table of pokenuclides into an acceptable self again, but more often than not you get swept away by the tides of dex number radioactivity

it’s fairly easy to ward off void decay if you spend enough time in - any world, but your homeworld is best. you were made according to the rules of your native reality, and you’ll always fit into those best

but what if your world

doesn’t exist anymore?

the glitches are shadows of dead realities

seeping into others, they try desperately to take form, but more often than not, they just bring the void in with them

put too many glitches in a reality and it’ll break from the strain. another world will fall into nothingness, and whatever survivors will start to lose themselves too

all they can do is try to latch onto another world - and it’ll all happen again

different clusters of glitches have different sources. the initial bout of glitches in the tppverse - associated with OLDEN, made the glitchhaze - are the last remnants of wing and thorax’s world

the reality might still exist, but - like, even the atmosphere’s chemistry is totally different. they try to push in, to bring the world back to what they knew - and the oxygenated blue-skied world will not let them, fuck yeah the wing-and-thorax stuff is now relevant to tpp

(as to how they came back into quote-unquote existence… look. amber would never accept a world where the fossil gods were trapped in the pc forever)

(they let a few things slip to cyrus in s1!platinum and are thus personally responsible for 90% of their own problems all the way up to omega ruby)

but the current crop of glitches… they’re not from that collective

the last few seasons, my lore has been full of universes blowing up and being rebooted, culminating in the big multiversal reset in pla

the new multiverse is a much less… troubled place, on the surface, so far. but despite the best efforts of the hosts…

there are still traces

And That’s Why Forrest Is Like That (angry)

{Newbie:}

...i see

{Mitzi:}

for something i bashed together over the past couple of months this is fitting into my pre-existing lore surprisingly well

it’s tying things together. gives me a reason to still care about the glitches

thank you for bearing with me while i took over the channel

{Newbie:}

no problem :LUL:

this is... fascinating for me

{Trollkitten:}

I really like your theorem on what the glitches are and where they come from

{Mitzi:}

but seriously this is giving me… ideas about certain non-voice legacy characters

feels like a way to bring in The Consequences Of The Hosts’ Actions, which is where my lore’s been trending lately anyway

turns out, you can’t just overwrite your problems

{Trollkitten:}

yeah

{Haji:}

What did I say??? :OMEGALUL: I've been on a ramble most of the day, I honestly can't remember

{Mitzi:}

i think you asked me something weeks ago about wing and thorax’s legendaries, and it set fireworks off in my brain

{Haji:}

Ah :tppPika:

Oh my. Yeah I remember now

{Mitzi:}

i think i went, like, ‘actually that connection does make sense’ and then ‘hey wait what if all the glitches are remnants of wing and thorax’s world’ and then ‘that would explain so much of why OLDEN is like that’ and then i kept going from there

evan mourns for the happiness he lost, the god bits of OLDEN mourn for the world they destroyed

… did i ever say that OLDEN is a fusion between evan, the bits of wing and thorax that didn’t end up in amber, and a whole lot of glitchstuff that might well be the same thing actually? well, IT is

{Haji:}

Y'know? I don't think so

{Mitzi:}

it’s a story but i need to go to bed

yeah this was secretly a section of mitzi won’t shut up about the fossil gods, part 5 the whole time

coupla endnotes!

- ultra space isn’t the void between universes. it’s… more like a corridor? a path between worlds, not void itself, which is why necrozma could use it to build an interdimensional empire

- the distortion world, on the other hand…

- phancero is… one of those glitches that decayed into a real pokemon, with a little help from the voices. the last remnant of the glitchhaze, finally made real

{Haji:}

I've been playing with this…

"So let me get straight. The Glitches we've been facing were already a living, consistent problem we'll have to deal with in Abe's world?"

There were a few giggles at the Slowbro since they had left that subject a few subjects back. Still, Rhianna decided to indulge Rocket with an answer. "I actually don't know. Maybe? They seem to be related, but the Fae we dealt with were like a human catch-all term for anything they couldn't explain. Letter shaped creatures and stretches of number carvings you couldn't walk past, people getting trapped by sentient buildings, and that's not even getting into things like the walking skeletons. A lot of stuff was brushed off as hallucinations brought on by "Fae Magic" but I don't know much of anything about this "other world" business to know if any of this stuff happened in his world."

Gen I glitches are.... Fun

Somewhat related, I like to imagine Phancero came to Kay with intent (we faced it twice iirc?) that if he was brave and strong enough to master it, he's retained his powers over the Void to safely go wherever. He's the latest Glitch King because there must always be a Glitch King

Phancero itself is only a fraction of Olden's real power, but much like the Fossils often serves as a good consistent vessel

(because the gods aren't actually the Fossils we know, it's just how they most often appear)

{Mitzi:}

… damn i’ve really been neglecting What’s Phanchy Up To These Days as a lore plot thread

[And what does this mean for Kahuna Moon?]

{Trollkitten:}

So... if Kahuna Moon lost her world... is she glitched?

that could explain a lot

{Newbie:}

Moon has Zygarde and Necrozma with her so i think she's protected... for now

{Mitzi:}

personally i’m going with her starting to glitch and having a really anime plan to stop it from happening

‘i will resurrect my world!’ ‘doesn’t that literally always backfire’ ‘i’ll do it!’

{Newbie:}

so this goes from just manic grief to manic grief coupled with an underlaying self-preservation instinct 🤔

this probably explains the "shadow boys" we saw in Star

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Time to meet the rest of the Gauntlet kids!

[February 3, 2023, third part of this conversation]

{Krizste:}

quick rapid fire me the other crazy kids

{Haji:}

N / Nia I'd feel awkward doing a rapid fire for because I only really know my lore for them 😂

But a few things of note:

- She's sometimes called "The Wurm Queen" because early on we had like three notable Wurmple before settling on one that became a Dustox and made it to the Hall of Fame

- Her relationship with Norman is usually portrayed as pretty friendly. This incarnation of him is awkward and doesn't know how to dad, but that's okay because she's such a nature girl she doesn't come home often either. They care but... They're just friends.

- In BB2 because of the mod, all of the Hoenn leaders showed up like you guys saw in Volt White 2. There were jokes that as leader of the region, she probably brought them all with her to help with whatever is going on in BB2.

Some lore has her as literally N since it's her name so she's able to talk to Pokemon and is seriously a Disney princess but much like N, that doesn't mean she won't kick ass if she sees Pokemon being abused.

Her Aggron was named ATM and is sometimes portrayed as a literal machine 😂

Also like with N we seemed to change our team after every town but around Slateport is when we started to stabilize. Possibly because Team Aqua made it clear she needed a set team to take on these guys as her usual "whatever is in the area works" tactic wasn't good for dealing with serious criminals

This sometimes causes her to butt heads with Izzy.

Isabelle Bow aka Ice has a few interpretations for her

All of them have her being a studious and relatively serious young lady though. She's very no nonsense to a point where the main joke with her is her post game team had Giratina, Dialga and Arceus and she totally doesn't believe in gods (despite accidentally creating one in the form of God Fish)

So different lore branches

- The bow aspect made her a contest star and she'll be happy to show that frilly girly girls can still beat your ass.

- A big part of her skepticism is because she works as a paranormal investigator and is out to prove none of this hocus pocus actually exists

- A member of the Interpol on Galactic's trail. Undercover name is Ice while her rival Diamond is more of a friendly fellow agent keeping each other up to speed and up to snuff because these space men are no joke.

- .... Possibly all of the above are true with her being a paranormal investigator who does contests between projects and was recently enlisted by the Interpol to help due to her expertise on disbanding cults if she can just prove Cyrus and this whole 'new world order" is a fraud

The blonde hair in her design came up because the last Animal Crossing game had just been released and people made the connection to the adorable dog secretary Isabel. Combine that with the meme of Isabel and the Doom Guy are friends and she occasionally goes into the Doom world to hunt and stress relief and welp :tppWowee:

Didn't help that we had a Torterra named BFG

Which could be Big Friendly Giant, but also had some portrayals that the tree on its back is a BIG FREAKIN GUN 😂

{Mitzi:}

yes, yes, i should be in bed. quick personal gauntlet kid characterisations:

red: obsessive antisocial glitchmancer/hacker who discovered his original timeline self started an apocalypse cult at age 10 and has never been quite the same since. is exactly as Like That as red and abe, but don’t tell him that

dipper: just wanted to look at plants and it all got a bit out of hand. token sane guy, probably the closest they have to a leader, poor kid

n: n. smiles serenely, befriends eldritch abominations, obeys no law of god or man, possibly immortal. extremely good at wrecking everything while remaining kind and enthusiastic throughout

izzy: discovered she lived in a lovecraft short story and immediately started investing in legendaries. won’t back down, won’t take no for an answer, won’t admit she might not actually be able to do something

reese: flamboyant dresses, acting stardom, and also maybe some plot if she absolutely has to. fought iris purely to steal her dress

esther: look she’s 9. likes hats and (association) football, is friends with an eldritch horror but that’s basically the most unusual thing about her. gonna grow up into an absolutely terrifying adult though, no question

BONUS:

team release the fossil gods: n, esther (kinda)

team do not release the impossibly ancient lovecraftian deities, they will literally destroy the world: red, izzy (when she doesn’t have more pressing things to worry about)

team please stop fighting: dipper

team you literally could not pay me to care about this: reese

{Krizste:}

{Haji:}

But yeah, so the longer version with Reese is Red0 is trying to be edgy and chaotic and darkness and stuff, Reese is literally a natural. Not even trying. S/he ignores the plot in favor of whatever has caught their interest at the time, which ended up being the first (?) Unova host to 100% the PokeStar Studios.

- Also the game did something weird where we got Darkrai to appear before the post game and it became our ace for that run.

- Reese loved fashion and bright lights, I think they'd get along with Yuu in the worst ways possible. Reese doesn't do explosions though, but would probably enjoy the flair if running the catwalk with pyrotechnics.

- There were questions about the relationship with Darkrai, whether Reese was being puppeted for dark purposes or if Reese was the bad influence and now Darkrai is a big name director making some of the worst movies but we love them anyway. Either way, we think the other hosts may have shown up in the post game because Reese was perceived as a threat whether they actually are or not.

{Krizste:}

{Mitzi:}

HOW BAD EACH GAUNTLET KID WOULD BE TO FIGHT, FROM MOST SURVIVABLE TO LEAST:

reese: a lot more collected than her gender presentation would imply, and if you did actually manage to piss her off her immediate recourse would be mean girls bullshit. if you do get into a pokemon battle with her, beware: her signature strategy is cheese

esther: her being friends with a fossil god comes up less often than you might think, she prefers to fight her own battles. if you do manage to hurt her badly enough though, there is that small omnipresent all-but-omnipotent sentient-piece-of-the-universe wrinkle to worry about

izzy: big jump here. izzy’s hobby is strat-o-matic-ing battles with universe-devouring lovecraftian monsters, cross her and you’re basically doomed. best you can hope for is register as an insignificant enough threat she’ll forget you exist after dealing with you

red: look the thing about glitchmancers is that they’re only moderately in control of their crazy powers at the best of times, and sometimes red will even admit that. he’ll either ignore you or make you wish you’d never been born, and you’ll probably not know which is which until all your insides have been swapped with chewing gum

n: oh god. n is even harder to piss off than reese but makes up for that by being (1) an ambiguously human unaging immortal of unclear origin and powers with friends in some very high places and (2) completely unpredictable in every possible way. n follows n rules, n does whatever they want, and n’s been known to bring regions to their knees. i’m honestly not sure what they’re capable of, but i’m sure it’s Bad

dipper: is he hiding some sort of secret rage mode superpower or angsty superpowered dark side? nah. dipper is exactly as kind-hearted and harmless as he appears, a true sunshine boy. you’d have to be a real tool to even think about hurting him

you know who agrees with me about this assessment?

the other gauntlet kids

{Haji:}

The question seems to imply you've already pissed them off, so for me it goes Esther, N, Red0, Dippy, Reese, Izzy. But as you said, the problem with some of these is they aren't so quick to attack. Esther is more likely to get in a fight than Reese, but the image of Dippy being the worst one to upset is because the others will all jump you is amazing 😂

I still find it hilarious with Dippy too because I'm sure most Trainers would look at the squad and go "Go for the tree hugger! He's the weak link!" And then Dippy has a fucking bear and steel giant and other things they probably weren't expecting a simple botanist to have :OMEGALUL:

YOU COME FOR THE TREES, YOU DEAL WITH THE FOREST

Oh and I will note in the branching lore for Reese to save on future confusion, some will say girl, some will say guy so decide your own pronouns. Reese may actually not have any

Or all

That's just a very Reese thing to do

{Krizste:}

reese pronown officially Thon

:^>

{Haji:}

I think I actually remember us joking at one point about Reese trying to physically hold all the pronouns. 😂

{Krizste:}

reese going to abooth with pronown stickers/badges and taking them all and decroating a hat wit hit like roark

{Tranzi:}

i was just thinking of reese as a drag queen but this interpretation is funny so i accept this :Keepo:

{Haji:}

I have him as a drag queen in my head :tppPika:

{Tranzi:}

when reese discovered the beautiful world of nounpronouns it was the time when darkrai actually tried to use dark void on its own owner to prevent world from a catastrophe

:Keepo:

{Mitzi:}

… i generally think of reese as a she/her gay man, but thinking about it yeah, she probably doesn’t give much of a shit

her gender is ✨gorgeous✨

{Tranzi:}

her gender sparkles so much that lil'd is crying in his french corner

:tppWait:

{Haji:}

Oh! Actual last thing I'll say about Reese

The run kinda soured towards the end because in order to beat the game, we had to be the Gauntlet PWT where the devs brought the previous four kids back. ... In a gauntlet... With boosted levels and items... And some "interesting" abilities for the Red and Crystal mons since they didn't have them. And no healing in between. This went on for days(? Certainly felt like it) until we had run out of other stuff to do to cool off from the frustration of losing and most were ready for this to be over with. We even traded in for a Landurus grinded to 100 and still couldn't win. Finally chat got mad enough to go into democracy mode to use healing items and I think we stayed in demo to fight too. Because we knew it could be done but it was so precise that it seemed like one wrong input could cost the whole thing which couldn't be done with the crowd we had for this. And then when we FINALLY win, the devs had put in the original gauntlet with the S1 kids for us to fight as well. I like to think Reese was so pissed by this point they just steamrolled it.

Hilariously, I actually hc that after this experience at the PWT, Reese was so mad at the others after the GKids found out Reese wasn't the world ending threat they thought, (HE was trying to stop THEM), they weren't on speaking terms for years. Reese has been living in Kalos under the name Diantha for some time by the time Esther came around

D has been well acquainted with this sparkle bun for some time now

{Mitzi:}

oh did we mention that reese is diantha? (in gauntlet y, anyway)

reese is diantha

{Haji:}

That was coming up when we got to Esther stories XD

I mean, that's just my hc, but going back to earlier when I said Wikstrom had Red0's team, Diantha had Reese's. Drasna had Izzy, Seibold had Dippy's, and Malva had N's

Some say just go with the game explanation where the E4 got to borrow them, some say the GKids came in during the post game, but like I said, me and a few others like to think the Diantha we see throughout the game was Reese all along

I missed a lot of X so I'll let others explain. A few key points though

- Esther being into sports came up from the Amie mini games iirc. This was the first time we had enough control to legitimately play them.

- Had Sail, which even if some other others had fossils, this was a first for TPP so there's some depictions that Esther may be an Acolyte (like Red is to Helix). Sail is an interesting god because it's usually said to be in charge of relationships; friends, family, lovers, meetings and partings, it's no surprise given how many friends Esther has either. Between the in-game group you travel with and the GKids asking her to join, she's pretty popular.

- notably we have a Ducklet named Fucklet and some tease that Esther doesn't know what that means, others say she totally swears up a storm surprising people given her age.

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

The rarely-sighted non-complete-disaster Red

[January 29, 2023]

{Mitzi:}

anyway my current lore read on dolly and parker is that they’re yet another pair of cici/evan and xena/azure counterparts, but for once their life isn’t terrible

wholesome beans that finally get a happy ending

{Krizste:}

theyre just lil beans going around and probably selling choccies for charity or something without care.

{Mitzi:}

a world where evan’s kindness finally, finally survived

{Sol:}

Parker in the extremely small list of Reds that didn't have fucked up lives

{Krizste:}

(including official reds, even)

{Sol:}

who else is even in that list

Kay turned out pretty alright despite the whole street rat thing

he's also like, the most competent Gen 1 host by far lmfao

{Newbie:}

what about the RGB race host?

Barry or somehting

{Haji:}

Basil. Or Bee

{Newbie:}

that's it

{Mitzi:}

given how he treats his competitors, maybe not

{Newbie:}

...i see

{Sol:}

yeahhhhh

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Why the Old Amber is so weird, ft the Great Oxygen Catastrophe

[December 20, 2022]

{Mitzi:}

care for a story unknown to all?

the prequel to that fossil gods timeline i slapped together last month, the old amber’s backstory

and that epithet is accurate, because amber is old

they’re older than helix and dome, we’ve already established this. the timeline i already made goes back a billion and a quarter-ish years before the abyssals even emerged, and even then, amber was there

but the true beginning of their story lies even further back

at least three and a half billion years ago (bya), if not earlier

with the emergence of the first of the beings humanity would one day call fossil gods

wing, and thorax

(author’s note: i stole those names off another loremaker in 2016, my lore’s changed a lot since then and i’m debating changing them)

(i doubt there were wings or thoraxes in their world. it was a fundamentally alien place)

whatever their actual names were, the entities i’m just gonna keep tagging ‘wing’ and ‘thorax’ were created - as i said, at least 3.5 bya, probably earlier

trying to tie their timeline to irl evolution is… a bit iffy. i am making even more of this up than usual, and there’s just not many irl records that far back

their aspects were [stagnation/corruption], though i’ve occasionally gone back on forth on which god had which aspect. it’s wing=stagnation and thorax=corruption at the moment, but that could easily change

even for fossil gods, they were remarkably simple beings. helix and dome have trouble with the concept that sapients exist outside of the two of them, but wing and thorax were barely aware of themselves at all

it’s hard to tell if they even knew each other existed

fence horse created them to protect the newborn planet from the vicissitudes of the multiverse. initially, that’s all they were for

but, rather unexpectedly, they started playing with carbon and hydrogen and water vapour

and they began to create life

(now that i’m thinking about it it’s probably wing and thorax that changed the planet from a nightmare hellscape of lava plumes and boiling rock to a stable-ish tectonic-cycling landscape with, like, oceans and stuff)

the world wing and thorax created was… different

the skies were cloaked in a pale yellow methane haze, by day only barely pierced by the faint light of a young sun

rather than stars, the night sky was criss-crossed by vibrant electric-blue aurorae, the trails left by the dyad’s long [REDACTED] as they wrapped around the world

the oceans were tinged green with rust. there was no oxygen, and almost no energy from the sun

but still, there was life

irl that life was basically all, like, really basic bacteria, but this is pure fantasyland, so in wing and thorax’ world there was… more

with little sunlight to potentially fuel a food chain, the dyad raised vents up from the mantle, building islands of life around volcanic smokers that slowly crept across the land

it was… intricate. interconnected. the plants were purple and stank of sulphur, there was some very alien chemistry fuelling it all

(don’t ask me what i’m not a chemist)

also, almost no hard tissue in anything. no exoskeletons, no bone, no woody tissue

the entire biosphere was one single, carefully-arranged system. why would you need to defend yourself against your fellow life?

this is the world the corrupted legendaries i mentioned in the first instalment came from

they weren’t corrupted then, of course. they weren’t really ‘legendaries’ in the modern sense either, that kinda requires pokemon to exist

they were more like… keystones. single organisms that formed the linchpin of entire ecosystems, like the millions of bacteria that live in a human gut

it was a quiet, stable sort of world, but in its own way, it was beautiful

and then wing and thorax noticed each other

the thing that brought an end to the pre-photosynthesis geothermal world in real life was… circumstances surprisingly similar to the moss incident, actually. plants (well. cyanobacteria) figure out photosynthesis, plants start leaking that most toxic of gases, oxygen, into the atmosphere, literally everything else dies, global ice age, blah blah blah

here, though, it was the biggest god fight the world has ever seen

{Haji:}

:tppGiga: = Wing Thorax = :pikachuS:

{Mitzi:}

yeah pretty much

fossil god dyads are balances of equal and opposite forces, not just different but almost incomprehensible to each other

giving those forces sentience… may not have been the best idea

wing knew its entire life that there was something disrupting its careful creations, breaking everything it tried to set up the minute its back was turned

thorax knew its entire life that no matter how much it changed things, somehow some of it would always return to the way it was before, refusing to refresh with the rest of the world

as they matured, they slowly began to detect an intelligence behind this

maybe a younger, more complex pair of fossil gods would have been able to communicate about this, figure out a way of understanding each other, even work together

but wing and thorax were, even then, very very old, and very very simple

and after all, weren’t they made to attack that which was anathema to their very existence?

2.4-ish bya, they slowly began to notice each other

and then they started fighting

their battle lasted for millions of years

at first it was kind of amateur hour? these two barely-sapient eldritch abominations slowly figuring out what ‘conflict’ is through tossing rocks in each others’ general direction

but they got better, and nastier, and then they figured out they could refine oxygen out of the oceans

funfax: fire only works on planets where there’s oxygen in the atmosphere. if it wasn’t the oxygen itself that poisoned the biosphere, it was the raging firestorms it fuelled that killed literally everything

some ‘legendaries’ survived, mostly because thorax corrupted them hard enough they started eating, like, mathematical concepts instead of chemical products

there was also the occasional bedrock-scouring divine scuffle, but really it was mostly the oxygen

it seeped out of the battlefields into the atmosphere and the ocean, and wherever it went, the world died

that biosphere i was talking about earlier? completely gone. absolutely everything, from the greatest keystone to the tiniest bacterium, died

the world was scorched by fires and lanced by radiation, the oceans all but boiled away. the vents erupted into volcanoes, and ash rained for a million years

it didn’t stop until roughly two bya, approx 400 mya after it started

when wing and thorax, crawling exhausted through the devastation, finally, finally killed each other

their metaphorical talons pierced their metaphorical hearts at the exact same moment. the physical laws that made them up unraveled, their fractals wiped away

there was light, and an explosion, the last one of this dying world

and then the snow began to fall

eventually, even the fires died. the whole planet slowly froze

(i’m cadging the timeline a little here. irl the snow happened during, not after, the fight, but this is more ~dramatic)

the shambling monstrosities that had once been the bedrock on which whole ecosystems laid began to quietly break down

it seemed like the end

except

there were two survivors, for certain definitions of ‘survivor’

the first was the old amber

the reason i refer to amber as ‘they’ is that if they ever used a first person pronoun, it would be ‘we.’ they are the last remaining shards of wing and thorax, squished together into a new being by

huh the last couple of words in that message didn’t send. Weird

but yeah, amber is a zombie fusion fossil god. they’re not quite wingthorax, there’s still a lot of parts missing from the fusion for them to be complete

there’s more of wing than thorax in them, but that’s really just a coincidence. is why amber is so good at surviving things that even the fossil gods can’t take though

at first, they tried to create life. but they can’t. even if the entire world wasn’t dust and snow, they just don’t have the fine molecular control you need to properly do biochemistry

… amber spent a lot of their early existence bashing into mountains metaphorically begging for death, yeah

eventually, the ice went away, but the world was still dead. among slowly rotting glitch constructs and an empty blue sky, amber waited for the end to come

but. deep, deep, in the darkest depths of the oceans, there were other survivors

tiny scraps of biota, too deep for the oxygen to reach, clinging to the inside of a hydrothermal vent, living and breathing

it wasn’t much. barely anything, really. but in the end, it was enough

bitty!pre-separation!helixdome, crawling around the ocean floor for lack of anything else to do: hey what’s this

and that is the amber backstory! will i ever not be surprised by how long a thing i start ends up being

i’ll probably do a (hopefully) brief epilogue later. some stuff about how amber feels about the younger gods, and also drive

this isn’t… all of it (there’s parts of the story that are unknown to all because amber doesn’t see how they matter, and there’s parts of it that are unknown to all because amber absolutely refuses to let anyone even reference them) but it is the key bits of the backdrop to my fossil gods stuff

maybe now other people can also have amber feels

s/o to the entire history of the earth youtube channel, where i got most of the irl info i bolted this onto

- oh! a final note:

i call wing and thorax ‘fossil gods’, but they didn’t have fossils

no hard tissue, no need. in a world of soft-bodied planimals there’s nothing even there to fossilise, this totally makes sense as an explanation for why we don’t have fossils from this archaean-era complex life, don’t @ me

later fossil gods use their fossils as… anchors, into the physical world? they’re not the core of their being, extremely far from it, but they are the lens through which they interact with the higher layers of reality

wing and thorax, though? no fossils, no anchor. they more… seeped up into the physical world from below

which is partially why they cared much less about their creations than their younger siblings, which is partially why… yeah

(amber’s amber is more like… connective tissue between dead god body parts. i call them a zombie, but they’re more than a little frankenstein’s monster)

{Trollkitten:}

Basically Amber was Dracovish before Dracovish was Dracovish?

{Mitzi:}

yeah this is roughly the i-know-what-to-do-with-the-gen-8-fossils brainwave i had a few weeks back

like if dracovish fixed itself up into a mostly-functional organism with an ecosystem niche and everything out of sheer spite

cut forward ten thousand years and there’s just this half-fish half-dragon thing-that-should-not-be hanging around, and no one thinks it’s weird

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Helix and Dome aren’t the only fossil dyad with a totally dysfunctional relationship!

[November 15, 2022]

{Mitzi:}

for the curious, more details on the time root killed the world with moss:

may be mentally glossing ‘massive volcanic eruptions’ (as are basically ubiquitous in the really bad mass extinctions) as ‘fossil god slapfight’

{Krizste:}

wow

cant believe thaat sad floppy glove can do so much

{Haji:}

Well tbf seems Root was still in the learning stages

{Mitzi:}

claw: that’s just what it wants you to think

{Haji:}

Pffft

{Mitzi:}

the older claw’s grown, the more fed up it’s become of being dragged around on root’s stupid adventures

{Haji:}

I wouldn't doubt that. It's like when they were kids, sure sibling said so soooo let's go? But there's a point where you have to say when it's not fun anymore

Especially when they keep getting you in trouble

{Mitzi:}

root and claw’s relationship is just as dysfunctional as helix and dome’s, but in a totally different way

helix and dome… they were friends when they were kids, but they were never really a team? they just slowly grew to flat-out hate each other

root and claw, on the other fractal, were definitely a team, best friends who did everything together

‘everything’ was mostly what root wanted to do

claw… well

the inciting incident of the massive fossil god war that almost destroyed the world and led directly to them being sealed was claw metaphorically knifing root in the back

there’s a reason claw is so damn passive-aggressive

{Haji:}

Yeah

{Mitzi:}

… judging by this, skull and armour’s relationship is not quite that bad yet, but certainly on the way there, cover and plume’s is still pretty good, but they’re both viscerally aware of the fault lines that could lead to it going south, and jaw and sail… honestly they have bigger problems

they squabble a lot (well, it’s mostly sail trying to browbeat jaw and jaw just plain ignoring it) but they do have each other’s backs in a way their oldest siblings haven’t in eons

they’re still young enough that trust is automatic

… i have a lot of opinions on the fossil gods, yes

{Haji:}

Oh same. I love hearing all the different interpretations

{Mitzi:}

… i’ve just realised that the one who patched up skull and armour’s relationship after the unsealing was probably aoooo

{Haji:}

Awww I could see that :burrito1:

{Mitzi:}

‘no fighting. sparring is fine, but no fighting’

‘you need to work together to get out’

probably why they like her so much

{Haji:}

Kinda funny, in my head Jaw and Sail are still really close but a lot of it is Sail keeping Jaw in line. Like he doesn't have a temper but since a lot of his element revolves around the termination of things, she often tries to reason with him when exactly it's time to get involved.

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Leo and Pepe have the sweetest brotherly relationship, and Iqarus is the last person Arceus should have made immortal

[February 5 2023]

{Popia140:}

Writing the script for another Ultra comic, the scene after Pepe and Cynthia defeat Lum and the brothers reunite and it’s nice to put in a few feelsy scenes to the Trollkitten original :StarsWeep:

{Trollkitten:}

I love this

{Popia140:}

Thank you :BeePog:

{Trollkitten:}

I love seeing what I would consider one of my favorite TPP works for one of my favorite TPP runs get some more love from another lorewriter

Ultra really has everything I love about TPP. Character development, weird reality-bending shenanigans, a fantastic villain, unearthly creatures from beyond the pale, and interesting ties to other runs

{Popia140:}

I guess I just really liked the gentleness of Pepe’s character, and still wanted to put some of his old sensitivity here, considering the stress he’s been in during the run

And also soft Leo??!! 👀

{Trollkitten:}

Yeah

He may have been decapitated, but he hasn't lost his head

{Haji:}

Yeah :tppAYAYA:

On that note, anyone else find it funny "Leo" ended up being the short name and not "Leon"?

{Trollkitten:}

...I guess that is kind of funny

Because if it had been Leon...

Then when Sword happened and we just happened to have a Champion Leon who just happened to have a little brother...

:LUL:

All things considered, I think it was for the best. Pepe and Napoleon have had enough adventures for a while, they don't need Eternatus on top of that

{Haji:}

Yeah

{Trollkitten:}

Although I can imagine one of them saying, "Great. That's, what, our THIRD planet-eating eldritch abomination in the past five years?"

{Haji:}

Now I'm laughing to remember that joke I made about Leo, Pepe, and D being told Icarus was their great-great-something-or-rather and being confused. In actuality, it was Leon, Hop, and Iris and explains so much about the champ's perceived invincibility :Kappa:

{Popia140:}

That’s a pretty good explanation!

{Trollkitten:}

There was some lore back when we did Conquest for the first time that Napoleon and D were descendants of the ancient warlord Abin the Third (Pepe didn't exist back then), which made them distantly related to Bill and Alice

I wonder if Iquarus's 'invincibility' was more a gift or a curse. Given how Iquarus had the self-preservation instincts of a masochistic lemming, it was likely a little of both

{Mitzi:}

it's less 'invincibility' and more 'fence horse refuses to deal with iqarus's family until forced to' :Kappa:

the horse would foist this off on yveltal/plume/ho-oh/the death god of your choice, but a side-effect of its deal with iqarus is that it has to deal with his descendants until his genes work out of the gene pool :Kappa:

... actually that'd make a fairly significant chunk of the human population invincible surprisingly fast

{Trollkitten:}

That could explain why so many of our Hosts can walk into walls for days on end and not sleep for a moment of it

And how humans even survive in a world full of things like Scyther and Hydreigon

{Mitzi:}

lore discussion question: who did iqarus make babies with :Kappa:

{Newbie:}

akari? :Kappa:

the idea of Terra being his descendant is funny to me so i kinda wanna go with that

{Mitzi:}

'everyone in the tppverse is invincible because of an extremely ill-considered deal god made that one time'

{Newbie:}

immortality is inheritable? 🤔

{Mitzi:}

well, The Deal arceus made with iqarus must be, to an extent, if leon is supernaturally invulnerable

{Haji:}

I personally don't think so, but those descended of an immortal tend to have some weird side effects 😂

{Trollkitten:}

I don't even know why Arceus chose Iquarus to begin with

Maybe he figured no one would miss that idiot

{Newbie:}

or Iqarus did something in a past life and Arceus decided to make him its errand boy in retaliation or something

{Trollkitten:}

Perhaps Iquarus died the first time he did something stupid and Arceus reached out to him in the afterlife for a deal: "You do this for me, and I'll ensure you live to a ripe old age"

Arceus is still slapping himself in the face for thinking that was a good idea

He really should have asked Iquarus how he died to begin with before evaluating whether or not he could be trusted with a matter of this magnitude

Iquarus probably tried to cross the street without looking both ways (or at all)

{Mitzi:}

those trams, bro

{Haji:}

-cackles-ICARUS GOT LITERALLY ISAKEI'D

Truck-kun said hi

{Newbie:}

i was just about to say—

{Mitzi:}

more like train-kun in this period. possibly tram-kun

{Trollkitten:}

And created a major time paradox because his passing down the gift/curse to his descendants ironically caused the version of him born in the new timeline to be sturdy enough to survive the incident

{Haji:}

Probably

{Mitzi:}

... would not surprise me if iqarus managed to grandfather paradox himself

the fun way, as opposed to the murder way

{Trollkitten:}

Haha yep

{Sol:}

iqarus is actually elfilis from kirby, getting hit by a kirby truck sent him to the pokemon dimension :DBStyle:

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

OLDEN storytime with the server oldbies

[February 1 2023]

{Haji:}

Reminds me! You've talked about learning some of the older lore, how much do you know about Bugsy and the Cult of Olden?

{Newbie:}

i know that "OLDEN" was the name of a Ledian during AnniCrys but uhhh that's about it :Kappa:

i'm not entirely sure where "OLDEN" as a name comes from either, tbh

{Haji:}

Picture time XD

{Sol:}

she has not read the sacred texts 

{Newbie:}

teach me :BegWan:

{Haji:}

Well first off here's where the name comes from

{Newbie:}

that does look familiar, actually 🤔

{Haji:}

About a two minutes in you'll see the crash

{Newbie:}

oh and i see it happened in Bugsy's gym-- oh ok things are making sense now

{Haji:}

Y u u u u p

{Krizste:}

a evevent of legends right there

{Newbie:}

Ledian

ok yeah

i get it now

{Haji:}

So this only happened with this particular Trainer iirc which is where the Ledian = Olden thing came up but was solidified later when we named our Ledian (as this is a catch all) Olden as well.

Evan eventually release everything as the countdown to closing was up and we ended the game at the league with only Ledian in the party?

{Newbie:}

Interesting

{Krizste:}

chucking 40 mon the the grinder

(or was that a diffrent event)

{Mitzi:}

possibly you’re thinking of the release-the-whole-box button

of which anicrys had one

we hit a point where we didn’t have enough box space to catch the whole dex. the mass releases started there

evan… he started off as a sweet kid. by the end of the run, his reputation was… different

{Haji:}

I MEAN.... considering how AnniCrys went, could you blame him? He got fucked over by the canon, nevermind what the lore put him through

{Trollkitten:}

Some say Evan was scarred permanently from the sinking of the S.S. Anne. Some say he was never the same... others say that the real Evan went down with the ship and that whatever replaced him... was worse.

{Newbie:}

i see

{Mitzi:}

anicrys! we beat the game, and while we were waiting for pbr to come back or whatever we released half the team

we spent - how much of the plot of anicrys do you know?

the game i mean, not the lore

{Newbie:}

i know that you start in kanto, the ss anne crashes, you go through johto fairly normally, beat the e4 and lance plus your old kanto rival, go back to kanto, and... i believe that's it

{Mitzi:}

aight

{Newbie:}

i know there were also host appearances and such. baba in a dream

also this is the part where timelines got fucky, apparently, cuz it was implied to take place in the same world as annired :Kappa:

{Mitzi:}

devs have been fxxkers for years – anyway

{Newbie:}

lmao

{Mitzi:}

okay, so, we did the ss anne rival fight before the rocket-hijack-boat-sinks bit, so as the run was happening we assumed azure was also on the anne when it sunk

we spent… basically all of johto searching for her. some people thought she’d died

{Newbie:}

yeah i remember reading about that

{Mitzi:}

except she didn’t. she shows up at the e4, triumphant return, everyone is hype. probably she just got off the boat before the rockets got on, she’s smart like that

but evan… he was definitely on the boat when it sank

he definitely spent… some time at sea, before he washed up in cherrygrove

but we just cut from the sinking to the washing

and then, a fair ways into johto, deku edited the rom while drunk and a random trainer totally glitched out

{Newbie:}

oh i remember reading about this. some believed it was azure's ghost--before the reveal and all--yes?

{Mitzi:}

our trainer name got an OLDEN-style text replacement. endlessly repeating, inolinolinol

yep

but then, she wasn’t dead

but then, evan did what he did at the end of the run

the one who died on the anne wasn’t azure

it was evan

… man, that plot beat hit like a truck

anicrys was a trip

just. the slow dawning realisation after the mass releases that there was something Wrong with evan

[But how does Brown tie into all this?]

{Haji:}

To add to Bugsy and the Cult of Olden, for some reason in Brown (the following run) Azalea Town was the only Johto town you could reach after an apparent eruption blocked all the roads to explore further?? So Paul took a VERY long bike ride to deliver the gym a pizza if memory serves me right. No real reason to either, but it was in the post game so part of our quest for "The Mystery Bird~" the Tickets were after? I'm not so familiar with Brown if anyone wants to jump in

{Trollkitten:}

Paul: I expect a REALLY big tip

{Haji:}

I think we got a badge so tip AND bragging rights?

{Mitzi:}

been playing through brown, in vanilla at least you just get the fighting dojo pokemon choice

(brown is. really really obviously kanto cut apart and stitched back together in a different order. all the same events, just in different spots)

{Newbie:}

i know nothing about Brown and Prism

except that Cyan is Lance's daughter

that and Phancero apparently originated in Prism

{Mitzi:}

it got foreshadowed at the end of anicrys and in brown, too

{Haji:}

Yup. The Mystery Bird. After Evan got access to the Tomb of the Voices on Mt Silver, he found the bird sprite at the back of the ruins. It flew off. At the end of Brown, he rescued the bird but it still flew off. We then got some heavy hunting this was all a build up to the release of Prism which we were getting to play opening day

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Forrest, and why the Voices are fighting all their former hosts

[January 16, 2023]

{Mitzi:}

mitzilore update: am now pretty sure racc and vw2r are in the same universe. building the timeline from there

i'm... about 70% certain forrest's Deal is that he's coming back to the hosts' world to shove their hypocrises in their faces. i just don't know, like, any of the details of that

{Sol:}

"Developer intent" (basically just from me) was for VW2R to be our revenge against Unova after RB2 so uh

make of that detail what you will

{Trollkitten:}

Kek

But yeah, I can see eventually some of the friendlier glitches realize that the Voices are hardly on the moral high ground and really need to have their hubris answered for

Still... Forrest did fight an awful lot of former Hosts, so if that was his intention, he probably did a decent job of it

{Newbie:}

if VW2R and RaCC take place in the same universe... you mentioned before the idea of RaCC taking place in a "dream world". would that still be the case, and does that make VW2R part of the dream realm as well? :RaccAttack:

{Mitzi:}

it’s more that chacrys was definitely a dream, so that’s what i defaulted to for racc

racc, now… i think it’s where the voices (and their hosts, who are just voices off doing their own thing) materialised or whatever after they punched arceus in the face and rebooted the multiverse

teeny little protoworld, really no more than a potentiality nexus. fortunately the voices are omnipotent

the hosts start calling it the memoryworld. making it a monument to the old multiverse, and stuff

the voices just wait until they have enough of a map to do a pokemon journey, and then they do that

but after racc… they rapidly get bored

and so they go exploring

fast forward to vw2r, when the voices come crashing back into the memoryworld

riding a glitch, and screaming about how the hosts have fucked up

… don’t ask me how yet, but it’s got sth to do with the overarching plot of s9… whatever that is

[dispatches-from-the-lorecord]

Behind the scenes with The Calling

[January 14, 2023]

{Popia140:}

So I speedran through The Calling [Haji’s old Randomized Platinum fic] and lemme just say how I really love how the gym battle system worked, the dancing and literal physical combat between the Pokémon and the literal trainers themselves

Pepe’s adorable, but that scene in Floaroma when he stops the grunts from the stealing the man’s honey with his creepily calm assertiveness was pretty badass to me, ngl, considering his reluctance to confront and fight

Even though it is old, the mystery surrounding certain locations is pretty good (Old Chateau, the Ravaged Path, that weird pool thing in the Oreburgh Mines) it’s cool to see someone’s interpretation of events different from my own

Also Pepe and Pearl’s relationship was very fun to read! The mystery of Napoleon’s disappearance really piqued my interest, and I was not really sure if he was his older brother in this interpretation (idk if they got separated from birth or something, or just simply not brothers at all) but it’s nice to see that Pearl still cares for him

Another thing that interested me was Pepe’s religious upbringing, with the fossils and all and being raised in some church, before moving to Twinleaf Town- I think it really gave his character good background and depth, which also ties into his peacemaking pacifist-like mindset

But anyways that’s all I have to say about Haji’s The Calling series, hope you don’t mind my rambling review @Haji

{Haji:}

I don't mind at all! You're making me blush :AYAYA:

I really enjoy the battle system. I've been trying to study different dance styles to make each one unique in how it functions.

I would normally be all like "shhh spoilers" but considering the story hasn't had an update in like five years, it seems silly to ask you to wait. It's a separated at birth situation. Why though is because I play a lot with destiny in the TPP universe especially having a single timeline in a seemingly cyclonic world

Timeline wise as you may have noticed while reading, this is actually before original Platinum

{Popia140:}

oooh! Did not know that! :Begwan:

So I was right with the separated at birth theory!

{Haji:}

Yeeeaaah.... [Pepe’s religious background] was one of the factors in my nervousness. At the time I preceded every Author Note basically going "Look, my lore is weird. Don't eat me" or something because I knew even if that's how it played in my head, I was scared of "going against the grain" with what everyone else was doing. Which mostly was Pepe the Frog memes and artistic snob portrayal

{Popia140:}

Personally, I felt that the artistic snob sort of personality didn’t mesh well with his shyness (in my opinion, it’s just a matter of taste), but I imagine that if he did paint, it would be out of a sort of therapy for his trauma under the voices and the crazy things he experienced in his life… or he just wanted to paint a cute Skitty because he has a weakness for cute things :Begwan:

Could go both ways, imo

Also, who was the girl during the blackout at the Ravaged Path?

{Haji:}

I can see that. In fact, after Ultra events, I like to imagine he does a lot of art for that reason. Still trying to remember things and drawing out memories to make sense of it. His friends can remind him of things they recognize or talk to him about some of the more disturbing images

[The girl in the Ravaged Path] would be Mindy! The Candice replacement in this world. She was a Psychic Trainer and portrayed as a showman, but Fossil wise, I had her with Cover

{Popia140:}

Napoleon is mentioned by Pearl in the story, so I’m assuming they must have met when they were very young- where did Napoleon end up? And did Pepe learn that Napoleon was his older brother in the end, maybe after-game?

{Krizste:}

What if Pepe uses art snobism to cover his shyness. Like he's trying to appear..... Whatever the word is.. not-shy, but It just looks like snobism

{Newbie:}

Confident?

{Krizste:}

Yeah that word!

Tryna pull of confidence but just being really jank about it

{Haji:}

Given what people probably expect of him as Napoleon's brother, I can imagine him putting on that kind of face  at parties :Jebaited:

Napoleon went to stay with Aunt Grace and Richard while all this was going on. Honestly never knew he had a brother until after Ultra events. Which finding out after that just made him worse about the whole... Trying to murder Pepe multiple times while not himself thing. Pepe woke up at the villa after they got back home only to learn it's been months he's been in a coma (time shenanigans. He made sure Leo was able to wake up in the "canon" timeline in order to stop Cyrus but it seems in a weird way, Pepe took his place. Missed everything during the Bill Overlord events and was too injured to do the Unova stuff with Cly, but Leo knew he was okay enough to go with the other S1 hosts)

Pepe on the other hand found out about Napoleon during his journey, so he knew  about it WAY ahead of Leo but they still didn't meet for.... Some time??? Again, Pepe becoming a time traveler at the end of his run makes his lore in my timeline hilariously screwy

{Krizste:}

Oh yeah who was it that lost his head again? Was that pepe

{Haji:}

Yup

{Popia140:}

Ahh thanks for the answers!!

Napoleon completely in the dark about it, lol

Did their mother separate them at birth?

{Haji:}

Sort of. With Forrest's [Gardenia] backstory I was going to get more into the pre-RPlat / pre-Red war stuff that was going on when he was a kid. Gravund [Roark] and the boys would have been too little to remember but Forrest was a little younger than Pepe is now so he's got some scars from it. Basically the family got split up when fleeing the violence so Johanna has Leo with her and thought her husband and other son didn't make it. Pepe was taken to Hearthome like many other war orphans but while it wasn't separated at birth they were both around maybe one or two years old at most

And before you ask about their father, I had an idea and then I wasn't sure but I've been on the fence about things so let's just leave him as a giant question mark

{Popia140:}

Aw, that’s sad for them :BibleThump: the Quinnels never really got to bond as bros

{Haji:}

Yeah... But things are peaceful for next several decades (next Sinnoh run wasn't until Gauntlet), so they've got time. Help out with the others when duty calls, but even many of the other hosts know they can go to Napoleon's palace to get away from things for a while. Cly's mansion is often a nice hang out but it also happens to be the gang's base of operations in secret so there's always some level of alert since Unova isn't as stable as Sinnoh is. (And besides, for Aaaaaall the trauma of Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn seeming to be in a consistent state of peril, Sinnoh is lovingly close by for Leo and Pepe to give a sense of normalcy for the newbies)

{Popia140:}

Aww, a happy ending :Burrito2:

{Haji:}

I love these two so much, but my gosh I feel bad for what I put them through. I feel bad for most of the hosts I wrote for, but good lord did these two need a happy ending

{Popia140:}

They def deserved it, they went through so much

{Haji:}

[cough] can I tell you a secret? |D

{Popia140:}

yea sure

{Haji:}

Even though I stopped writing it, this is the story that has never left my mind. I've actually continued working on it, but never posted and one of my goals is to continue at some point if I ever get my projects in order

Sometimes I'll just be watching a show or something and get reminders of the characters and how much I miss them

[Bonus: a mildly out-of-order side tangent from Haji’s comment about the TPP universe being cyclical]

{Trollkitten:}

In my headcanon, the TPP-verse is cyclical the same way the Zeldaverse is cyclical. All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.

{Haji:}

Yup! Though why is always different in my books partially because the villains have different motives each time (and adds to why they think it would be any different this time because they're not like the last guy who did)

{Newbie:}

i vibe with the idea of the universe just breaking down and getting rebuilt over and over again, reality in smithereens and then being rebuilt from the ground up... or just completely coming up with entirely new plots while disregarding canon :Kappa:

{Mitzi:}

my lore somehow manages to do both. frequently at the same time

{Newbie:}

you and i are like-minded :Keepo: