#adrift in distortion. || WORLDBUILDING

[quasimyth]

VESSEL TIERS

In order from least power to most.

VESSEL POTENTIAL.

Because Vessels are formed when the Aura of Legendaries finds its way into human (or Pokémon) bodies, there are some people who have a small quantity of Aura in them that predisposes them to take on more Aura from that Legendary if they should ever choose to. This is called Vessel Potential. 

Though people with Vessel Potential don’t really have powers, they do have some advantages over just regular people. If you weren’t born a Vessel, you’d have to train hard so that your body can take on the power of a Legendary entering into you; people with Vessel Potential for a particular Legendary don’t have to go through said training for that Legendary. In addition, Vessel Potential predisposes you to have certain skills and traits in areas that evoke what your Legendary represents. A person with Shaymin Vessel Potential might have a talent with plants and Grass-type Pokémon. A person with Kyogre Vessel Potential might be exceptional with Water-types, feel drawn to the sea, and never get seasick. In the case of having Vessel Potential for a Psychic- or Fighting-type Legendary, this gives you rudimentary Psychic or Aura abilities—particularly an unusually attuned intuition, such as for your opponent’s next move in battle (Psychic) or the health of someone in your vicinity (Aura). Moreover, people with Vessel Potential sometimes feel drawn to the Legendaries whose Vesselship they have Potential for—a natural path for them to become proper Vessels.

STANDARD VESSEL.

Regular Vessels are at the lowest tier of Vesselship. They’re your average Vessel, having a piece of their deity’s power: Ability, move pool, soft powers (powers such as reality warping that don’t rely on moves to be used), and a stat spread that can either be the same or different than the Legendary that is their patron. They are subordinate to their patron Legendaries, who can exert a huge degree of control over their actions by withholding or utilizing the Vessel’s powers at will, or even taking those powers away. In extreme cases, the Legendary can even completely take over a standard Vessel’s body, shoving their consciousness out of the way and basically using them as a flesh puppet.

That being said, underestimate a standard Vessel at your peril. You know why Legendaries like making Vessels, and also like it when said people randomly appear? Because Vessels are used as a way for Legendaries to multiply their power. Gods grow their powers exponentially, but humans’ exponential power growth outstrips even that of the gods—which is why ten-year-olds can canonically take down Legends, and which is something that gods want to claim for themselves. So they put their power in humans and maintain control over the receptacles of that power in order to multiply it far faster than it can multiply on its own. Through this method, even a standard Vessel can grow more powerful than their patron Legendary’s base power—while still remaining under the patron Legendary’s control, thus allowing the patron to get even stronger.

There are three types of standard Vessels: Naturally Occurring, Chosen and Usurper. Naturally Occurring Vessels are those that are born with Vessel abilities. Chosen Vessels are those who, with or without Vessel Potential, come in to Vesselship later on in life. Usurper Vessels are those who have stolen Vessel powers from another Vessel, or perhaps even the Legendary itself. All Vessels are immortal unless killed by disease or another’s hand.

TRUE VESSEL.

True Vessels are a step up from standard Vessels. As discussed here, they take on a piece of the patron Legendary’s consciousness and agree to serve said patron for all time, in exchange for access to all of the Legendary’s power. This encompasses the powers stored in every single one of the Legendary’s Vessels and other True Vessels, meaning that True Vessel abilities can take on absolutely terrifying proportions. However, they’re also more highly monitored by their patron Legendaries, and more susceptible to getting their consciousness yeeted whenever their patrons want to use them for some purpose.

As a step up from standard Vessels, True Vessels are immortal unless killed by their patron or unless their patron dies. If they die because their patrons die, they will reincarnate or be able to enjoy an afterlife, but if they die because their patron killed them, they’re basically sentenced to oblivion.

Whereas standard Vessels retain entirely original personalities, True Vessels also become markedly more like their patrons due to having a piece of their patron’s consciousness inside them. Given that being a True Vessel irrevocably changes you this way and is usually seen as a sign of religious devotion, not many people actually become True Vessels in spite of the significant amount of power that it brings you.

EXALTED VESSEL.

This is the highest state of Vesselship, one that each Legendary only shares with a single person (if any). Exalted Vessels are humans who, like Friedrike Skyherald on @cosmoscourge, have completely fused with their patron Legendaries. The Legendary becomes their Pokémon form, and they become the Legendary’s human form, thus making them one and the same. The melding of the two consciousnesses creates a being that parallels both personalities equally, with many original traits of both sides being retained. 

This is done by Legendaries so that they can take advantage of humans’ absolutely wild exponential growth on a more personal level. Aquilaeon is the strongest Legendary because she is the fusion of Eternalux (already the strongest Legendary tied with Eternatus) and a human (Friedrike)—the divine power of a god combined with the infinite potential of humanity. However, it has one drawback for the Legendary: Because personality traits are shared equally, a poorly chosen Exalted Vessel could end up taking over the Legendary’s personality, turning it into something that it never wanted to be.

Exalted Vesselship, like True Vesselship, is intended to last forever—or until the Legendary removes you from itself. Removing a human Exalted Vessel causes no health problems for the Legendary, but it always results in the death of the human and it resets any power gains that the Legendary accrued from the relationship. It is for this reason that Legendaries are extremely careful with whom they pick as Exalted Vessels. It simply wouldn’t do for you to gain power for thousands of years, only to have to reset everything because the human proved untrustworthy!

[quasimyth-a]

when vessels have kids.

(this overrides some of the information that i put in the about section of @theirvessels so bear that in mind :P)

if the two parents’ patron legendaries are different but in the same tier: kid is 100% guaranteed to be a vessel and has a 50/50 chance of being a vessel of either legendary.

if one parent’s patron legendary is a higher tier than another’s: kid is 100% guaranteed to be a vessel; the higher tier takes precedence--except if the higher tiered parent is a vessel of arceus, in which case the other parent’s typing overrides and the ???-type child becomes a typed vessel of the other legendary.

if a vessel and a non-vessel have a child: kid is 50% likely to inherit the vessel ability, 40% likely to inherit vessel potential, and 10% likely to inherit nothing.

if a vessel and someone with vessel potential (VP) have a child: kid is 75% likely to be a full vessel, 20% likely to only carry the potential and 5% likely to have both full vesselship and vessel potential. having full vesselship and vessel potential means that the child can switch to being a vessel of a different legendary without it being the traumatic process that switching vesselship usually is.

if two people with vessel potential have a child: kid is 47.5% likely to have vessel potential from the father only, 47.5% likely to have vessel potential from the mother only, and 5% likely to have vessel potential from both.

if one parent is transitioning between vesselships: the result depends on how much they transitioned. 49% transitioned or less = treat that parent as having the original vesselship. 50% or more transitioned = treat that parent as having the new vesselship.

[zenosanalytic]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Impermanence

So like I said, Rey’s story was probably my favorite part of the film, and it was my favorite because it played most to what I thought of as the film’s strongest points, which I identify as: dialogue, interaction, acting, its characters and, always very important to me, its Philosophy and Worldbuilding >:]

So Rey and Ren’s stories are pretty deeply intertwined, but I didn’t really get any Reylo vibes from TLJ. I def think that’s something to be worried about given that this is Disney and how that pairing would snap into convention, and the moment when they started fighting side-by-side did confuse and annoy me for a bit before I realized what it was about from Ren’s perspective(just your usually Sith assassination graduation). Part of why I didn’t get that feeling from it was that Ren’s story, while Driver’s performance was excellent, struck me as so limited and passively responding to/reflecting on Rey’s that it was practically ancillary to it. He was less his own character in the movie than a foil; a narrative device for Rey to bounce off of. Her desire to redeem him didn’t strike me that way either because Her motivation always felt to me to be about placing herself in the universe. Like: She didn’t want to redeem Kylo for his sake, or because of her feelings for him, she wanted to do it because that’s what Luke did. Which she directly says: “you ended the last war by redeeming Vader, so that must mean that’s how I will end this one, by redeeming my Vader, Kylo!” This gets into some larger ideas so I’ll back-up a bit for a sec.

Rey came to that island to find Luke, but that was really just a means to an end. Her real motivations were three-fold, two minor ones, getting Luke to go fight and getting Luke to train her, and one core motivation: finding out about herself. And these two minor ones are actually related to the core one:

if he trained her she would be his Apprentice, following his lead and teachings rather than having to figure out her own place and way; her confusion about her feelings and ignorance about herself wouldn’t matter, because he’d be giving her a purpose and clear social place. She wouldn’t have to struggle to figure out where she feels she belongs, who she feels she is and should be, and what she should be doing and why because he would be giving her all those answers.

if he went to fight she’d be the person who found Luke Skywalker, brought back The Legend to set everything Right again, and she’d have done her part without ever having to face the challenge of measuring up. Her anxiety about herself and her power wouldn’t matter because she wouldn’t be at the front of things; her role would be in the background, supporting the Real Heroes and Legends and following their lead.

So Rey’s main hope and fear, the source of both her drive and her anxiety, was always finding out about herself and orienting herself in this, for her, new social world she has dropped into, and in which she feels partly to be a stranger and a phony. That is made explicit when Luke questions her on who she is and why she’s there; iirc, her first two answers(”to bring you back, to train”) are stilted and awkward and he easily dispenses with them while her third, her confusion and fear about herself and her desire for him to help her make sense of it, is honest and heartfelt, and gives Luke real pause(and fear). Obvsl this is, on top of everything else, an analogy for becoming an adult so I’ll just get that out of the way as it’s pretty basic and not really what I find interesting about it. So her desire to redeem Ren was based not in sentiment for Ren but in her desire to fill Luke’s place. It is mainly an expression of her anxiety over feeling disconnected and socially adrift by attempting to solve it through role-modelling and repetition of her defining narratives; by abstracting her life via metaphor to the Legends she holds dear, and out-sourcing the anxiety of decision to the surety of history, though she doesn’t really understand the people involved in those events, and their experiences don’t really map to her circumstances.

So the whole “redemption” thing never struck me as romantic, because her interactions with Ren and desire to Redeem him were pursued for abstract immediate reasons in service to psychological primary ones.  Affection and attraction had nothing to do with it. She does come to share a common feeling with Ren(quite directly in that they, as aware Force-Sensitives, can feel each others’ emotions and thoughts), but this is never affection; never sexual or romantic attraction. Rather it is true Sympathy; a recognition of emotional and contextual similarity. She sees her conflict, confusion, and unmooredness reflected in his own, though distorted by his different particulars.

And not only does she see his confusion and chaos(mirroring her own), but she also feels the stability and control he can exercise within that via his ambition, sense of purpose, and historical nihilism[1]. As someone in conflict, she wants that stability so she seeks to understand it where she finds it(Luke certainly isn’t displaying any). In a similar way and for similar reasons, though with some morbid inversions, Rey needs to understand how he could choose to throw away the family, friends and easy affection -the connections- which she most wants because she’s never had them. Her social universe, made up largely of people who knew him and who he abandoned, is filled with all these potentials for the affirmation and acceptance which she most desires, and which he destructively rejected. She has little idea how to cultivate these connections which he was born with -has never even been able to have them(until Finn[2])- and so she’s anxious about Fucking Up and, in one of these morbid inversions, is partly drawn to Ren as someone who has had them. As, I think, has been clear since TFA(and is powerfully and repeatedly reinforced in TLJ), Rey sees herself as abandoned and thrown away; she conceives of herself as an outsider but, more than that, as one who was rejected as “not good enough” and “not wanted”. Ren threw others away, chose to be an outsider, and she also needs to understand that because it’s inconceivable to her that anyone would make such a choice. That he knows Han loved him, and doesn’t hate Han(even, in fact, still says he loves him), makes this even more incomprehensible to her, which makes her need to understand stronger. And not only in an abstract sense of curiosity; by understanding why he threw away people and how he feels about that, she seeks to understand why she was thrown away, whether she was truly unwanted, and through that seeks the validation of her hopes for what her parents felt for her; seeks a morbid reflection of Ren’s murderous “love” for his father in an abandoning “love” in her parents. That’s why Ren’s “I didn’t hate him” line is so important, and why it hits her so true. That’s why she reaches out to him(beside the control and his place as foil to her own desires). In some ways he reflects her, but in others he is a surrogate for those who rejected her and her reaching out to him is part-and-parcel with her desire to understand them.

Which brings up another interesting part of her narrative, and this is where TLJ’s take on the The Force starts to get involved and developed. Luke defines The Force differently than Kanata did, not as an energy that “moves through and surrounds every Living thing”, but as the Energy between and connecting all things: its Flow, its Tension, and its Balance. Rey’s stated motivation, her greatest desire, is to know what her place is. But her real, unstated motivation is To Belong, because she’s never Belonged with anyone, she was always alone, and she thinks knowing her place will show her who she Belongs with[3]. This is her driving Tension -the source of Tension- in her story; the thing she wants most in the Universe. Which ties it to The Force; Tension is explicitly mentioned as an expression of it. Building on this, there is a place beneath the island associated by Luke with “The Dark Side” -a pool in a cave, one wall of which seems to be ice- which the movie explicitly aligns with this precise Tension: Rey is drawn to it, feeling that she will find answers about her parents(her Belonging) there. There are other metaphysical things about this place I’ll get to later: what’s important right now is this connection: Rey, to Tension, to The Force, to this Place, to the Dark Side. Taking this as an archetype and looking at the other Force users in the film, we can see a possible pattern: Ren’s Tension is the desire to be strong and measure up to, then surpass, then be free of, his heritage; to be without “weakness”, as he sees it: restraint, connection, and sentiment; To “Let the Past Die”, and be Free to pursue his own will/strength as and when he wishes. Giving in to that leads him to the Dark Side. Luke’s Tension was Anxiety over living up to his own Legend and being able to Defeat “The Dark Side”, and indulging in that Tension on one terrible night precipitated Ben’s final alienation. So the film seems to be arguing that this Tension in the Force is what the Jedi-culture(and thus Sith-culture) considers “The Dark Side of the Force”. This doesn’t just advance compelling worldbuilding; it situates Rey’s central conflict and motivation within that Worldbuilding; within her larger world. I find this sort of structural integration with character narratives really satisfying, and it brings an added meaning to conventional movie techniques for displaying emotion by projecting it onto the world(like placing her most intense moments of confusion, danger, and inner-conflict within environments of darkness, storms, cold, and wetness during times, for instance).

Thinking about it, I feel like maybe you could expand this(and thus The Force) to being a central theme of the movie? In each “Good” character’s narrative there is a Tension driving them which they, over the movie, learn to let go of(which, in turn, leads to their naturally fulfilling it). Luke lets go of his sense of failure at continuing the Jedi, finding peace and ensuring the Jedi continue. Poe lets go of his desire to Lead through Action and Heroics, which saves the remaining Resistance, especially their pilots, and in doing so becomes the leader he wants to be. Finn lets go of his myopic desire to get back to Rey and escape the First Order and starts to really fight for the ideas and people important to him, which leads him to defeat the FO personified by Phasma, brings him back to Rey, and ensures both their safety. It is in letting go that people achieve balance and fulfillment in this story. Conversely, Ren gives in to his desires for Power and Escaping the Past by destroying it, and thus ends up being entrapped by them, like the tragic, hubristic lead of an ancient Greek play. That idea of Enlightenment, Freedom, and Fulfillment coming from letting go, and suffering coming from holding on, is Very Buddhist and Very, Very Zen, which finally brings me to my Favorite aspect of this film ^u^ ^u^ ^u^

I’m obvsl not the first to draw a connection of inspiration between The Jedi and Zen(I’m actually pretty sure Lucas even said as much at one point, but I’m too lazy to look it up rn), but the return to a more Original Trilogy, Zen treatment of the Jedi and The Force is something I loved So Much[4]. The main Tension in this narrative is between the characters while the world is just... there in its Suchness, surrounding them, and they’re in it, and part of it, and their reactions to its Impermanence. Life lives and dies and lives again; matter is built, torn down, and built again; all physical things are locked within a Permanent cycle of Impermanence, and The Force is the sinew binding it all together, the Energy flowing permanently through the impermanent. And understanding and accepting that, even unconsciously, brings about release from pain, internal balance, and true fulfillment. Hence Rey’s Tension/Desire, and the Balance she achieves when she lets go of it; admitting her fears about her past and her desires for it without letting them control her. Hence Ren’s failure to achieve balance and freedom by giving in to the Tension of his Ambitions; his past, quiet literally in the projected “ghost” of his master, defeats him. Hence Rey’s Flow with The Force when she realizes the pattern set before her(the Rocks at the end; a clear callback to Luke’s earlier comments, and to Luke’s training with Yoda on Dagoba which the Island sequence is a reference to, and Luke’s line about “moving rocks” a direct quote from his Dagoba training).

And, in typically ironic Zen fashion, by giving up on her Desire to find where she Belongs, by accepting her greatest fears of the truth and meaninglessness of her natal rejection, Rey is inevitably brought precisely to where she Belongs: to the embrace of Finn and her new found family within the Resistance. I know at this point I’m repeating myself, but this is why the complaints about Rey “not training” never really flew[5]; one doesn’t need to “learn” how to “use” the Force, one already can “use The Force” because One is already attuned with it simply by existing. One is “Born Enlightened”, as it were. What one must do is “get out of the way”; not Try to move something with The Force, but allow The Force to Flow Through You and connect you to the universe such that your Will and its Will become one, and the thing you wish to occur occurs(and, conversely, you play the role you are meant to). TFA Got this, but TLJ both Gets it and explicates it explicitly to the audience.

The whole destruction/giving away/loss of iconic objects plays into Impermanence as well. Most obviously there is Yoda’s “the books don’t matter” comment to Luke, which is one of Zen’s most famous aspects; it denies a doctrinal, textual past, and gives primacy to the experience and learning through experience(though obvsl there ARE Zen books and doctrines; so another similarity :p). More broadly is the “suchness” mentioned earlier: Physical existence is As it Is, and also impermanent. TLJ confuses things a bit though because, while Buddhism acknowledges that all physical things are impermanent, it also recognized the impermanence of immaterial things like ideology, family and connection. Zen is particularly “rigorous” on this point through its (mis?)understanding of the doctrine of “voidness”, or Sunyata. Zen interprets the Heart Sutra,

Oh, Sariputra, Form Does not Differ From the Void,

And the Void Does Not Differ From Form. Form is Void and Void is Form; The Same is True For Feelings, Perceptions, Volitions and Consciousness

often taken as the primary text for this doctrine, as an affirmation that physical reality, identity, ideology -all Things- are “empty” projections of Void or “Nothingness”, which is the true reality which Enlightenment is direct awareness of and communion with.

TLJ, and SW in general, fumbles and commits the common Euro error of replacing a Buddhist conception of impermanence, and Zen conception of “Void”, with Platonic ideas preferencing the immaterial as “divine, immortal, and Real” in opposition to the flawed, illusory “mortality” of physical reality. So TLJ, while destroying or giving away important items, consistently ties that to the message that the ideals and concepts/feelings/ephemera those items symbolized or taught -Family, Relationships, Freedom and Justice and Democracy, oneness with The Force, The Resistance, Identity, Agency, Heroism, etc- are what is Truly Important and Lasting as opposed to immaterial possessions. That’s not very Buddhist and, in particular, it’s not very Zen, as Zen not only denies the permanence of both physical and ideal things, but makes a point of encouraging one to appreciate the impermanence of existence, material and immaterial, and to see an ultimate unity, rather than opposition, between material and immaterial, through their impermanence and Voidness. Star Wars includes many visuals that are true to this tradition(Luke’s final scene in TLJ, for instance, is an excellent example, especially as it is an obvious symbol of his life as a whole, and represents his attaining a final, complete community with The Force), but then it undermines it a bit with this far more prominent Idealism which, while |:T, is sadly expected and so I don’t let it bother me.

Though, from a fan perspective, I LOVE the idea of their being doctrinal disagreements about the nature of The Force among Force-sensitive and Force-using communities. It helps to make the world and its possibilities bigger if this fictional world reflects the uncertainty, and inevitable multiplicity of opinion, of real life. And, obvsl, it both creates more space for fans to fiddle around in, and presents an easy justification for doing so(well This, my own Personal Jedi Sect, thinks THIS...) >:] >:]

And, obvsl, Zen Yoda is Best Yoda, and reinforces the Zen treatment of The Force as well. Luke’s sarcasm and leaf-swatting of Rey was also a nice callback to the ole Swamp Hermit, and to Zen, which has in its history some pretty famously crotchety Teachers.

Ok, I think that’s it on this topic. If I come up with anything else about Zen, The Force, the TFA trilogy’s Force-Users, and TLJ, I’ll make another post and mutually link the posts. Thanks for Reading ^v^

[1]”nihilism” isn’t really the word I want here, but I can’t entirely metaphorically grab the term/concept I’m reaching for |:T I mean his whole insincere “let the past die” schtick

[2]Well there’s also BB-8, but I’m not sure if she feels that’s the same. She certainly knows her way around droids, and one gets the sense she likes them and gets on well with them, but at the same time she clearly doesn’t see her relationships to droids as being as fulfilling as those she has with biologicals; her responses to people are just much more intense and invested. Or Maybe this is just part of the Series Bible for SW: that bio characters generally not respond to droids like their equals, even if they are friendly and respectful towards them. The position and condition of Droids is a Whole Other Topic re: Star Wars, Politics, and Philosophy though, so I’ll stop there ftm.

[3]This is one thing about the story that makes Reylo worries understandable, I think, because one of the possible answers the film presents Rey as considering is “with Ren”, and there’s fundamentally a romantic implication in that. They’re both young Force-Users. They’re both, obvsl, very attractive and conventionally “fit”. They’re both conflicted, confused, and searching for answers which is a frequent romantic prelude in film. Moreover he presents himself as having answers to her questions and is obvsl trying to seduce and dominate her in ways that anyone who has ever dealt with passive-aggressive manipulators like him can recognize. Which are -again; sadly- common cinematic harbingers of romance and sex. The movie certainly plays with this, but while watching it I always felt that it was for effect, for characterizing Ren and their interactions, and I thought Ridley’s performance both completely refused to reciprocate this and presented a... unstated awareness of and resistance to Ren’s overtures. Which is why it didn’t ping me as “legit Reylo” and cause concern; she was aware of and quietly guarding against his bullshit even while seeking to understand him and learn from their connection. And this was all subtle and silent, conveyed purely through her physicality and line-delivery.

[4]Though, obvsl, it was rather shallow and aesthetical in the OT, like most early Euro attempts to adapt the concepts.

[5]aside from Luke’s training being all of “shot in the butt by a laser ball while blindfolded” before he blew-up the Death Star, and Rey getting more moments of Force failure than his missing the bullseye once and going for another pass

[quasimyth]

That’s it, I’m making the “murky, sinister drinks” in Team Galactic’s fridge literally drinks made out of Distortion World stuff. When you drink them you are drinking the Aura of the Distortion World and to nobody’s surprise it’s Cyrus’ favorite. 

[quasimyth]

So I finally figured out why Volo and Cynthia can turn into Giratina--

They’re not just Vessels, they’re what are called TRUE Vessels. 

A thing about Vessels in my lore: Due to the combination of divinity and the infinite potential of humanity within them, they can grow to have near-unlimited power. But compared with say Knight’s Heralds, they have relatively fewer freedoms. Since Vessels are created due to the presence of Legendary Aura inside a human (or Pokémon) body, they are bound to their Legendaries. 

A Legendary is usually aware of the presence of all its Vessels as well as the major goings-on in their lives, and they’re basically free to do whatever they want with them whenever they want. Mainly this manifests in limiting their Vessels’ power when they don’t want them using it, but it can go as far as the Legendary completely taking over your body and using you as a puppet. Though they will 90% of the time let their Vessels do as they please, they’re not shy about stepping in when they feel their values are violated, or if they feel that you need spiritual growth--even when accounting for cosmic immunity, which literally doesn’t work if you’re a Vessel trying to use it against your patron. Even if you get stronger than your patron Legendary, they will always have the option of exerting complete control over you, since they are the source of your power and they can take it away in an instant. 

A True Vessel takes that even further. In exchange for merging your consciousness with a piece of theirs, the Legendary grants you immortality and the ability to access all of its power. This bonds you even more closely with the Legendary than before, but it also puts you more under their control and it only comes with proof of extreme devotion. Given the heaps of dedication involved to earn this right to this, and given the dedication you’ll have to show your Legendary after the bond is made, this is usually a religious obligation. What kind of dedication, you ask? Well. You’re immortal, right? That means it’s a contract to serve your patron Legendary forever. Only two things will end this term of servitude. One, if the Legendary is killed, you die with it. Or two, if you go back on your word in any way and for any reason, the Legendary will rip its consciousness and its power from you, killing you.

A note: Whereas weaker Legendaries such as Heatran and Zapdos may struggle with taking on too many True Vessels at a time, the more powerful deities such as Giratina, Arceus, Eternatus and Eternalux are omnipotent enough to take on as many as they want. What I’m saying is, if you want to make one of your muses one of these, feel free to sign the fuck up because it’s more or less open season! :DDDDDDDD

[quasimyth]

Cynthia’s Family 

Because it’s about time I introduced y’all to them!

(picrew here)

This is Cynthia’s ex-husband, Wang Yijun (王怡君), the former Champion of my America-based fanregion Cameira and a former Olympian. He was known as “the Wallace of Cameira” and of course, he is very famous. He was an Olympic athlete in gymnastic Coordinating and the first person in history to win three consecutive gold medals in three Olympic Games; he’s also Cameira’s first Black Champion as well as its first Chinese one--and the first POC and mixed-race Champion of Cameira overall. He and Cynthia fell in love due to a shared interest in Coordinating and shared intellectual interests; they both graduated from elite universities, so neither one really is a slouch! 

But as time went on, the burdens of a long-distance relationship began to wear on them both. Neither wanted to give up their Champion position for the other, so they met whenever they could and merely loved each other from afar--something in which they were both in denial about affecting their relationship. What’s more, Cynthia started to become a little obsessive over her sense of duty to Sinnoh as its Champion, and Yijun started to become a little more complacent in his career. Whereas Cynthia always wanted to push to new heights, Yijun had started to develop the attitude of “I’ve done all I needed to do, I just want to relax and have a good life.” Yijun also noticed some of his wife’s manipulative tendencies; like I said before, she was a mini-Volo, and sometimes it showed. Though they professed to love each other on the surface, things were slowly--then more rapidly--breaking down.

Career-wise, Yijun’s complacency started to show. First he failed spectacularly at his fourth and final Olympics, making a mistake-ridden performance that meant he couldn’t even move on to the finals. Then, just weeks after his Olympic disappointment, he was dethroned as Champion. While the disappointment of that second fall obviously hurt, he also saw it as an opportunity to start afresh--he could move to Sinnoh and be with his wife, and the two would be together again. But Cynthia, by that point, had long since been done with him. She really just couldn’t vibe with a partner who wasn’t always pushing her to be better, and she felt that it was his own personal failings that led to his downfall both as an athlete and as a battler. So as the third and final blow in a long series of misfortunes, Cynthia filed for a divorce. To this day, he’s still very bitter about the whole thing, believing that she only divorced him because he had lost his professional standing.

Cynthia and Yijun have two children, Nadeska and Valiena Karashina, who were named in the language of the Griseous Clan. I’ll go into them more below.

Nadeska, like her parents, is a super overachiever. She is an Olympic figure skater who broke her father’s record of winning consecutive Olympics--counting this year’s 2022 figure skating she’s won four--and, as someone who’s also pursued gymnastic Coordinating, she’s the only person who’s won consecutive Olympics in both the summer and winter Games. She was the youngest person ever to win an Olympic gold medal at age 12 (humans in Pokémon are stronger than regular humans, and can do this, fight me) until Feiyun of @cosmoscourge​ broke that record at age 11. She’s also the first woman to land a quad of any kind at the Olympics and the first person to land a quad axel, and she also holds a record of having landed five quads in a single performance. As a Vessel of Giratina, she competes in the Olympics’ Enhanced Division, which is for humans with supernatural powers that give them additional strength/speed/reflexes; ever since, she’s been doing even more death-defying stunts on the ice. Oh, and by the way, she’s also pocket dimension Hisui’s first-ever Champion after having become the founder of the Hisui League and winning the right to be its Champion in a series of battles. With such a record under her belt, she and her ace Hisuian Lilligant can take on almost any challenge.

But, as with many super-achievers, her path has not been an easy one. For one thing, her schedule means that she has to take advantage of her Vessel abilities and sleep only as a luxury. For another, she was one of many skaters who struggled with anorexia--since less weight means you can execute more impressive jumps. She took a two-year hiatus from figure skating because of this, working on herself and questioning whether she before ultimately deciding not to give up her love of it. She uses her life story, though, to be an advocate: she’s notable for speaking out against the insane pressure on female figure skaters to perform, which results in rampant abuse and eating disorders at the highest levels of competition.

Then there’s her twin brother Valiena (yes, the Karashina family has been blessed with two sets of twins) who just……exists. He’s 25, the same age as she is, but he hasn’t really done anything noteworthy with his life; he’s been a straight B student, a mediocre battler, definitely brilliant at many of the things he’s set his mind to, but on the whole he’s really unfocused and has no idea what his passions are. He kind of just vibes, goes on Tumblr, plays video games, and makes funny TikToks. Cynthia and Volo have been surprisingly lenient with him, but starting in his teens Cynthia had begun to ramp up the pressure, and he certainly doesn’t appreciate how she’s turning into an Asian mom around him. However. He does have one thing that’s extraordinary about him. And it’s the fact that he’s the only person in history to have broken the Griseous Clan’s assimilation curse--making him one of only a handful of people in all of human history who have managed to break a curse from Arceus at all.

He was born without knowledge of the Griseous Clan’s language, the first sign that something was wrong. As he went through his childhood, he also displayed the classic signs of being uninterested in his Griseous Clan culture and unwilling to learn his ways. But at age ten, which is when most of those afflicted leave home and never come back, he stayed. He stayed, and was eventually wrestled into learning his clan’s ways, which he later grew a true appreciation for. He did sometimes get the urge to move away, but he was always able to resist it, drowning out Arceus’ little voice in his head with his love for Hisui and his family. A few years ago, that urge stopped coming altogether.

Now he’s in college (again, after dropping out) studying metaphysics to see if he can uncover the reason why he was able to resist the curse and others were not…There’s just one little problem, and it’s that he sucks at metaphysics and he’s failing all his classes. Part of him wants to keep trying, to keep plugging at it, because he has a feeling only he would know how to undo the curse that’s been plaguing generations of his people. But part of him wants to just give this up, leave the discovery to those who know better than him, and continue to aimlessly drift. 

[quasimyth]

The Griseous Clan / Clan of the Old One

There were never just the Diamond and Pearl Clan in Hisui. The original peoples of HIsui included the Griseous and Azure Clans as well. Azure represented Arceus, and is named for the Azure Flute used to summon him. The Griseous Clan, of course, represents Giratina.

The hallmark of the Diamond, Pearl, Azure and Griseous Clans are all that instead of tracing spiritual descent from the same unknown source as the rest of humanity, they trace their spiritual descent from Dialga, Palkia, Arceus and Giratina respectively. The four of them at first lived in harmony, worshiping and being close to their gods--save for the Griseous Clan, whose god was the most mysterious and reclusive and who referred to it only as “the Old One” until Volo came along and actually met the god for the first time. But Arceus knew who the Griseous Clan was worshiping. Arceus hated Giratina for having opposed him. Therefore, he sent the Azure Clan to wipe out the Griseous--with the remaining Griseous Clan members interspersing and hiding amongst the other three Clans ever since.

But it’s just as Princess Leia said in Star Wars: The more you tighten your grip, the more people slip through your fingers. In the past, the Griseous Clan had lived blissfully and happily, without a single inkling of what was wrong in the world. Now, due to Arceus’ mistake of being far too straightforward with his aims, they were fully aware. They had once thought that Giratina was Almighty Sinnoh, the true creator of the Hisui Region. But now, they realized that it was Arceus--and they saw it as a bad thing. No just god would launch an unprovoked war on an innocent people with whom they had previously lived in harmony, and no just god would seek his peoples’ domination of the land when all its peoples lived peacefully as equals. Their interrogation of the mythology had become more fervent; their attempts to reach their patron deity became more urgent. All while hiding and assimilating, reaching each other only in faint whispers, clandestine meetings, and of course, their secret tongue.

It was to this life of suspicion and secrecy that Volo was born--and it was what caused him to grow so obsessed with finding the truth. He knew that his people alone possessed the secret to how this universe was so terribly wrong, and he was determined to follow it no matter how far he had to push. Many of his clan had perished while trying to unravel the metaphysical secrets of the universe; Volo was the only one who had survived long enough to earn Giratina’s knowledge and respect. What he saw, though, almost made him wish he hadn’t--until that almost-regret turned to nothing but fury.

Though the Griseous Clan had gone through such horrible things already, Arceus had worse in store for them after Volo’s failed attempt to overthrow him. To punish them for Volo’s “treachery,” he decreed a second attack on the Griseous: his people in the Azure Clan would hunt them down from their hiding places and wipe them out for good. Giratina sent a call to its people to join it in the Distortion World, where it would attempt to shelter them from Arceus and where they would reside until it was safe to live in the world once again. Many thousands were killed as they made their way to where Giratina had promised them shelter, including most of the clan’s elders. But many more were saved…at least for now.

The story of the Griseous Clan was then beset by violence. They had to move several times throughout the Distortion World, because Arceus kept sending the descendants of the Azure Clan—who’d been summoned from Hisui/Sinnoh to live in his fell City of the Gods—to raid them. But even though many were successful, Giratina—who was more powerful than my Arceus—proved to be too stubborn a protector, not least with Volo at its side always ready to take on Arceus’ forces in a blind rage. So Arceus resorted to other means to get the Griseous Clan to bend the knee: pure assimilation.

This assimilation was not done violently, as with many other persecuted peoples of the world. This assimilation was the result of a gradual curse placed on as many Griseous Clan members as possible, one that began at birth and worsened as their lives went on. The Griseous Clan’s language is born with each of its members, because it’s deeply spiritually tied to the language that Giratina speaks—but the first sign of the curse manifesting is that children would be born without the ability to speak their language. They would have no interest in their clan’s ways, with many showing a marked preference for Arceus over Giratina. Finally, at some point during their lives, they would move away from their families to live in the City of the Gods, never to return. This was Arceus’ cruelest and most effective trick, one that even Giratina failed to stop for hundreds of years; while Arceus could hardly stand up to Giratina in battle, no being in the universe could outdo his ability to curse and to warp.

Nowadays, the Griseous Clan stands at a precarious precipice. Where once there were 10,000 members--about the same amount as the other clans of Hisui--now fewer than 500 remain. Their language is classified as endangered, with only 432 remaining native speakers and fewer and fewer children being born with the ability to speak the language each year. Some have begun to lose hope that anything can be done to reverse this unfortunate turn of events. But as long as the Karashina family is around to fight, they will not give up their pursuit to save Giratina’s oldest people.

[quasimyth]

📕Do you ever run out of things to be curious about? (For Volo)

      “Curious? I would not call myself curious about the ways of the world, merely analytical. The world claims to change, the world claims to improve, and yet, for all the variations on the music of humanity, this cursed species’ tune remains the same…

      “For hundreds of years I have striven against Arceus, only to meet with the same results. Slavery was abolished in the 1800s, yet this world is more reliant on slaves than ever. Democracy and anarchy have galvanized the world, yet most fledgling democracies are plagued with corruption before falling back into the hands of foul tyrants. The freedoms of ordinary folk to dream and explore are the most abundant they’ve ever been, and yet we still remain so desperately trapped in the cogs of exploitation that nine million people starve to death each year--only some of those who die because they cannot pay to live. Because you see, there is a concept in this universe called the Revolutionary Paradox. If the cosmos are not to be destroyed and remade, humanity needs to expunge Arceus in order to see true improvement in the world--but humanity needs to create true improvement in the world in order to expunge Arceus. There is nothing to be curious about, truly, for as long as the world is not reset, the two ends of this paradox will continue to feed into each other, and nothing can fundamentally change.

      “So yes, I can say that I’ve run out of reasons to be curious. Because as the years drag on and I see no changes in the truth of how humanity comports itself, I’ve begun to run out of ways in which to analyze the evils that plague us. Yet at the same time, I do have to wonder. My daughter has a different opinion. She tells me that in every era, even in cursed Dispara, human ways seem to have proven me wrong. Real change has been made, she says. The paradox is broken, she tells me. For in spite of the world’s many problems, people are happier and freer than they’ve ever been…and, she says, perhaps it’s because I have helped them.”

He huffs slightly and shakes his head.

      “I don’t see it, personally. I don’t see these newfound freedoms of which she speaks. Perhaps it is true that the world has grown more tolerant of those who have been historically marginalized--but those who hew to the old ways grow more vocal by the year. Perhaps we in the 21st century have been blessed at last with a world without war--but this century has 78 more years in it left to spare, and we are far from the end of it. She even dares to claim that the world has begun to wake to the cosmic tyranny that has bound it--yet it remains to be seen how Arceus and his followers will eventually turn events in his favor, as they always have, as they always will. Truly, for all her optimism, all sapients are still trapped in the same tragic cycles of pain and loss…

      “So, you tell me. What is there left to be curious for? What is there left to wonder about how this tragedy of ours will end?”

[quasimyth]

The Nature of Hisui

Hisui has somewhat different mechanics than other parts of the Pokémon world because it originally wasn’t part of this version of it. 

Long ago, Hisui was the cosmic keystone of a different universe likewise lorded over by an Arceus whose moral scruples were…Not exactly what we’d call ideal. It was his seat of power and the shining jewel of his world, something over which he was incredibly vain. He took pride in how lovingly he’d crafted its powerful variants, its beautiful terrain, and the rich cultures that populated it with descent from three different deities (the Griseous Clan didn’t count, as it was created by Giratina; this alternate Arceus--A!Arceus--was in fact the one responsible for its plight). He lavished Hisui with all his attention and privileged it even above the other parts of his world, leaving them to fall to their sparsity. That is, until the alternate Giratina (A!Giratina), disgusted by Arceus’ neglect of the other regions, appealed to Yaldabaoth Arceus for help.

Yaldabaoth Arceus, aka Yarceus (whose fc is Sebastian Michaelis, by the way), isn’t always a master manipulator. Sometimes, he will act in non-pragmatic and even foolish ways for the sake of sadism or to fulfill one of his extreme emotional needs--hence why he initially chose violence against the Griseous Clan when he knew he could just curse them; he wanted the pleasure of wiping them out violently. But when he’s got all his wits about him and he wants to lay it on thick, there’s hardly a being in the multiverse that won’t fall for his charms--and so A!Giratina fell for him as well. Gladly, he took up her cause, slew A!Arceus and appeared to that universe as its savior. Having already taken over my main Pokémon universe and my alternate one on @cosmoscourge​, he sat back pleased as another Pokémon realm fell into his grasp.

Yet one thing annoyed him beyond all others: A!Arceus had embedded himself as deeply into the alternate Pokémon world as Yarceus had into his own. This meant that the alternate world would never truly be Yarceus’, and that until he purified it of the other Arceus, it would never truly bend to his will. Smart as he was, he immediately set about trying to purify Hisui first, because he figured that once the cosmic keystone was cleansed of A!Arceus’ influence, he would be able to finally rule over this world completely. But instead of being purified because the cosmic keystone region was purified, the alternate universe was so deeply steeped in A!Arceus’ magic that the rest of the universe violently rejected Hisui, slowly beginning to cut it off from the rest of the reality. For such was the cruelty and magical capability of A!Arceus: If any part of his universe were ever rid of his influence, the rest of the universe was “trained” to reject it, even to the point of self-destructing. And yes, it would even react this way to the cosmic keystone being so purified--because he would rather not have a timeline at all than have any part of it claimed by another god.

Yarceus did the only thing that he could do in this situation: He stole the newly purified Hisui from the alternate timeline and plonked it down into his own universe--leaving A!Arceus’ timeline to completely rot and fall apart. A!Giratina cried out, for even in their damaged heart they’d cared deeply about the timeline that A!Arceus mistreated, and they couldn’t bear to see it crumble that way. They turned to Arceus, begging him to find another solution--offering to help. But Yarceus revealed his true colors to them, imprisoning them in his own universe’s section of the Distortion World and forcing them to watch as he corrupted their beloved Hisui with his own fell influence.

Yarceus then set about modifying the mechanics of the Hisui region to his liking. He gave the Hisuian variants Abilities to suit his own style and introduced Held Items to the battling system--but he has to say, he was rather intrigued by the fact that Hisuian Pokémon don’t seem to suffer as much from level gaps as regular Pokémon do, as well as the fact that their Effort Levels maxed out a lot faster than a regular Pokémon’s Effort Values. He wasn’t too fond of the fact that status conditions went away after battle and that they only lasted temporarily, nor was he too pleased with the fact that stat boosts faded after a few turns--but he did like the fact that all stat boosts applied to Physical and Special simultaneously. As he tinkered with the region and attempted to make it “perfect” according to his whim, he realized one thing: you couldn’t have one thing without its drawbacks. That is, you couldn’t have both Physical and Special stat boosts without those boosts also going away after a few turns. You couldn’t have status conditions having more severe effects (in my headcanon at least) without them going away after a few turns. And you couldn’t have Effort Levels maxing out faster without making higher-level Pokémon more vulnerable to their lower-level counterparts. Knowing this, he decided to retain some of Hisui’s unique mechanics in a test run that would last several thousand years, to see whether Hisui or the regular Pokémon world’s mechanics would prove more powerful. Whichever system prevailed, he would then convert his entire universe over to it.

Uuuuuuunfortunately for him, he really isn’t the strongest Arceus out there. Keep in mind my backstory on him: he was actually a Multiversal Being, a being that’s usually of immense power, who developed a complex after realizing he was less powerful than other such Beings. What this meant is, he didn’t have the magical know-how to basically copy-paste Hisui into his own timeline in a smooth and efficient manner. This meant that Hisui was essentially Frankensteined in in a surgical procedure that used only the cosmic equivalent of Scotch tape and Elmer’s glue--and soon, his timeline began to reject the interloper. Continuity itself began to unravel at the edges of where Hisui had been placed, a place where Sinnoh would have formed without its own Hisui if Arceus had not intervened. In order to preserve this land (as well as a good chunk of his own timeline), Arceus had to split it off into its own pocket dimension, where it now still exists separate from the rest of the Pokémon world. 

Nowadays, Hisui is regarded in the Pokémon world as a mythical, legendary time. The stories about it are viewed in the same way we view classics such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, with people debating whether Hisuian historical figures actually existed or whether Hisui itself ever existed at all. Due to how it was basically shoved out of the timeline, nobody remembers it properly as a historical place; due to how sloppily it was pasted in, it’s a miracle anyone even remembers it as a place of legend. 

In terms of battling mechanics, though, Pokémon from Hisui and Pokémon from the regular timeline follow their own mechanics. Due to timespace distortions there are fields that force you to follow Hisui mechanics and fields that force you to follow regular mechanics. But in the vast majority of places, this is how things work:

Pokémon from Hisui gain strength faster through Effort Levels than Pokémon from the regular timeline with Effort Values. Effort Values and Effort Levels are equivalent in strength.

All Pokémon from Hisui automatically have 31 IVs under the regular system. IVs do not matter in the Hisui system.

Pokémon from Hisui do better against Pokémon of higher levels/greater strength than them. However, Pokémon of lower levels/lesser strength also do better against them.

Status conditions cast by Pokémon from Hisui are more potent, and status effects as secondary move effects are more likely to occur. But they only last temporarily, and not as long as temporary statuses cast by regular Pokémon. Status conditions cast by regular Pokémon are less potent, but last until cured or until they naturally wear off.

Pokémon from Hisui get more stat buffs with stat-boosting moves, but these stat boosts go away over time. Pokémon from the regular timeline keep their stat boosts unless lowered or switched out, but it’s harder for them to raise their stats.

For the longest time, Hisui was a pocket dimension trapped in the past (thank you so much to @corvidmagicae​ for blessing me with this idea). But now, it has opened back up to the present, and has established its own League. Who is the Champion of that League? I haven’t introduced her yet…More information to come! :333 

[quasimyth]

tag dump!

[quasimyth]

A terrifying thought: Pokémon who’ve spent enough time in both Hisui and the main Pokémon world being able to switch between Hisuian and regular mechanics at will

There’d be some limitations like. Switching only once every five turns but still. Terrifying

[quasimyth-a]

tbh part of why giratina was so opposed to arceus trying to turn all disorder into order is because they’re smart enough to realize that the multiverse needs both. you can’t have life without death. you can’t have light without darkness. you can’t have matter without antimatter. you can’t have order without chaos. arceus in their youth was unaware of those things and was like no, everything has to be order because disorder is EVIL and must be ELIMINATED and hnnnnnggggggghhhhhhhh. even now giratina has several disagreements with arceus because of christian arceism’s whole thing with “being reborn to a new life” after death and giratina is like :\ you really just wanna delay the inevitable for as long as you can don’t you :\

[quasimyth-a]

tbh when giratina called cynthia to be their spokesperson, cynthia knew she didn’t actually have a choice in the matter. vessels’ patron deities have an extreme amount of power over the vessels themselves--they own their true names, they can possess them and control their actions at any time they like, they can modify their powers or take them away entirely. cynthia 100% would have done this of her own free will, but even if she wouldn’t have, it was a divine calling that she couldn’t turn away from as giratina would have possessed her to speak through her anyway. she treats it as a tremendous honor, but the consequences of not taking on this “honor” are honestly…yikes.

[quasimyth-a]

honestly tho i still prefer giratina over arceus because arceus has most of giratina’s faults…the main difference is that he acts like he’s infallible. 

[quasimyth-a]

also i was looking at the pokémon wiki and i saw some of cynthia’s quotes in pokémon platinum and i just………giratina isn’t evil, guys. it’s literally canon. 

here’s what she says:

"Giratina is enraged because the two worlds are endangered. It has merged the Distortion World and our world at the Spear Pillar. That's why both worlds are becoming distorted. But there's nothing to fear. You can defeat Giratina and show the tight bond you share with your Pokémon. Or you can demonstrate how much you want it to join you. If you succeed in doing either, Giratina will understand. The distortion of the two worlds will stop!"

we know two things from the bolded parts: one, giratina tried to stop cyrus because they cared. this could range anywhere from actually caring about humans and ordered worlds (which my giratina does not), to caring about cyrus attempting to play at something he’s not entitled to do (more in line with what i would hc for my gira). and two, if by showing your bonds with your pokémon you can get them to stop the distortion, that means giratina understands and can be swayed by the bond between human and pokémon. yeah it’s also canon that they were banished for being violent but that doesn’t mean they can’t be reasoned with. that also doesn’t mean they don’t care about the world because obviously they do somewhat? it just might not be in the same way as humans care about the world or themselves.

[quasimyth-a]

giratina’s canon cry is actually the sound they make when they are angry or distressed. on a normal basis, they sound more like this, this or this.