#timeline resets

i'm thinking of incorporating the concept of time resets into it, like, they die, then by sheer will, they come back, back to a moment before they died, (maybe a different story actually lmao), but think of loading a previous game file because your current route sucks, like you made the wrong decision and you wanna try again, fix it, find the best ending

i want to see how many times reader has to die until it starts weighing on them, and other characters start noticing just how reckless they've become, imagine how disturbing it is to watch someone you care about act like dying is the least of their problems

constantly, happily throwing themselves into danger

i wanna see like at some point when an outcome they never wanted to happen happens, they instinctively reach for a knife, a weapon, anything to kill themselves with because they can just "start" again, go back before, choose a better option, make a different decision

the act of killing oneself is a serious thing.

killing yourself is hard. a very difficult thing to do. sometimes your survival instincts override that desire to die. sometimes you stay despite.

and the reader, you, growing so numb to it you think it's the easier option rather than moving forwards and accepting the situation as is, highlighting just how far you've fallen, how far you've deteriorated, like all your experiences building up but you can't think of anything better, you're permanently locked on that goal you've set for yourself, "save neteyam" "save him"

lol you can tell im not a big fan of big sudden trauma, like if someone died, this character is traumatized now, not to negate the fact that someone dying is traumatizing, but i like trauma that piles up, less like a truck that runs you over, more like crushing pressure that wears you down overtime, makes you think you can keep moving, crawl yourself out but it keeps you stuck, the pay off is more satisfying that way imho (i just realized this is literally houseki no kuni's influence on me)

i think i just like psychological horror but anyway ahsdfjhsajf

like imagine neteyam still dies no matter what action the reader takes, and reader keeps having to kill themselves to go back and i wonder if it numbs them, because the whole reason they're even on pandora in the first place is to save him, or at least that's what they think so, like this intrinsic desire to make things better becomes your hubris, and you think the universe, whatever it is that put you here is just playing with you at this point, torturing you

doomed by the narrative? doomed by fate? idk.

imagine another failed route, neteyam dies again, they're on the rock, with the family, neytiri's cries in the background and their mind just goes static, maybe a mix of grief, frustration

you're lwk losing your mind, spiraling; why is nothing working, what's the point of me being here, why do i keep failing, i don't understand, i don't understand, why does he keep dying, i made a different choice this time, the plan was perfect, what went wrong? i don't get it. i'm so tired. how many more times do i have to do this, i don't want to do this anymore---

and absentmindedly you're reaching for your gun, a knife, your own face blank as your vision blurs at the edges, staring at neteyam's dead body, and you're pressing the blade into your skin, or fingers on the trigger slowly pulling it back

this has happened before, you killing yourself right there, the world going dark and you wake up back to when he's still alive, where everything's fine and alright before it all goes wrong

but god, why won't anything change? why is it so hard to stop it from going all wrong?

this time something's different, someone notices what you're doing

maybe kiri, lo'ak, or jake, his attention snapping on you, and he's grabbing your arm, stopping you, bewilderment clear as day on his face; "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

and for the first time, something surprises you; this never happened before

yes im just basically making a crackfic atp but thats like the whole reason i write, self-indulgence, writing about concepts i find interesting

ADDITIONALLY ADDITIONALLY, what if, it turns out, the only way to save him is to sacrifice yourself

the only way to stop him from dying, is if you die in his stead

your existence in their universe, someone who first saw it as a work of fiction, is a form of imbalance, you're not "wrong" but you're not supposed to be there either

because the universe works in mysterious ways, and I'm a firm believer in there being balance and the universe always doing it's best to correct any forms of imbalance, either slow, or sudden

and there's always a price for everything, you can't take and take, you have to give

"This story is a tragedy because it didn't have to end this way." vs "This story is a tragedy because it was always going to end this way"

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 🤔