You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"Words describing it fail. Pages relating it shrivel. Tales recounting it end."''|'''[http://magiccards.info/arb/en/28.html Nemesis of Reason] flavour text''', ''[[Magic the Gathering]]''}}

Imagine if some non-human entity, such as, let's say, [[TVAll The Tropes Wiki]], became a three-dimensional living entity with self-awareness and consciousness, that wanted to sit down and have a lovely little chat. What would it look like? Like a [[Moe Anthropomorphism|surprisingly feminine, charming little sprite]] named [[Trope-tan]]? [[Matrix Raining Code|Walls and walls of binary code that resolve themselves into a house-like shape?]] Or perhaps a whole universe, a world, complete in and of itself?

At some point in the conversation, the personification of TVAll The Tropes drops a little [[Mind Screw]] in your tea: [[The Treachery of Images|you are not looking at, or conversing with, all that TVAll The Tropes is]]. You are not even seeing an [[Glamour|illusion that TVAll The Tropes is projecting into your mind]]. Rather, the sheer [[Sugar Wiki|awesomeness]] of TVAll The Tropes, the [[Darth Wiki|might]] and [[The:Category:Darth ContributorsWiki|immense hideousness]] of it]], bypass your eyes and occipital lobe entirely, and your mind meekly registers it as the closest, safest, yet still comparable thing on hand.<ref>For safety's sake, just say [[The Wiki Witch of the Web]] put a spell on you</ref> You Cannot Grasp The True Form, or else you will [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation]].

When someone is in a truly outlandish environment, their brain will just make up stuff for them to see. Usually an excuse for the artist not to have to draw the weird otherdimensionalother-dimensional stuff.

* [[Death Note (Manga)|Death Note]]'s 13th volume, [[All There in the Manual|How To Read]], mentions that the true form of the [[Shinigami]] King is unknown and may be incomprehensible to humans.

* ''[[Baccano (Light Novel)|Baccano!]]'''s {{spoiler|Ronnie Suchiart}} reveals his [[Eldritch Abomination|true form]] in the light novels once. No physical description is given, however, on the basis that the sight was so terrifying and incomprehensible that it was blocked immediately and entirely from the spectator's memory.

* Implied regarding goddesses and demons ''[[Ah! My Goddess (Manga)|Ah My Goddess]]''; because they exist in a twelve-dimensional state naturally, four-dimensional beings such as humans cannot truly perceive them. This was most openly stated in chapter 268 where a demon purposefully forced Keiichi to witness a bit of her true form and nearly shattered his mind.

{{quote| '''Mokkurkalfi''': You don't perceive our true appearance. Your existence and ours are different. My form, and what you think you are seeing, are not necessarily the same.}}

** In [https://web.archive.org/web/20141026155313/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Galactuspov.PNG one instance] when Galactus appears before a large number of species, the page is filled with numerous smaller pictures showing how each species perceives him.

* In the ''[[JLA-Avengers|JLA/Avengers]]'' crossover: after flying into space, [[Superman]] and [[Iron Man]] see the forcible merger of their worlds as two gigantic hands pushing the two Earths together. Tony comments that this can't be real, and Clark says that this is simply how their minds chose to represent the event.

* In an early [[Justice League of America]] comic, the JLA encountered a [[Cosmic Horror]] calling itself [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|The Unimaginable]], a creature so far beyond human comprehension that it was effectively ''invisible''.

* In ''[[PS 238PS238]]'' #35, a [[Journey to Thethe Center of Thethe Mind]], the Lords of [[Order Versus Chaos|Order and Chaos]] appear at the start to explain that much of what we're seeing is a metaphor that we can make sense of, starting with themselves.

{{quote|'''Order''': What that means is that I'm ''not'' really a pleasingly-shaped metallic object that can talk.*<br />

'''Footnote''': *The purest form of order found on Earth is usually in the form of math problems where you have to show your work.<br />

'''Chaos''': And my true form isn't a jumble of random threads of what appears to be string.**|'''Footnote''': It's really entropy, which can look like string. However, [[Metaphorgotten|it's very difficult to tie anything together with it]]. Chaos itself is usually found in junk drawers and the bottom of closets.}}

* In the ''[[Superman]]'' story [[Whatever Happened to Thethe Man of Tomorrow?]] [[Lois Lane]] tries to tell what Mr. Mxyzptlk's true fifth-dimensional form was: "I can’t describe what Mxyzptlk then became. He had height, width, depth, and a couple of other things, too.”

* The Vishanti, a trio of higher entities who sponsor the office of [[Doctor Strange|Sorcerer Supreme]], explicitly state that they cannot show their true forms to mortals because it would [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|wreck their minds]].

{{quote| "We went through five Adams before we figured that one out."}}

* No one knows what the true (or original, if you prefer) form of ''[[The Thing (Filmfilm)|The Thing]]'' is. Not in [[John Carpenter]]'s version, anyway.

* ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'', the [[Rotoscoping|rotoscope]] animated film based on the [[Philip K. Dick]] story, had an interesting take on this.

{{quote| '''John:''' I think we can assume that these entities are more advanced than us. Why don't they just come right out and tell us what's on their minds?<br />

* Sauna in the movie [[Sauna (Film)|Sauna]] appears to humans as sauna, while it really is something more. This is most likely because it chooses to appear in a form that people can comprehend.

* [[Discussed Trope|Discussed]] in ''[[Flatland]]'', whose protagonists are two-dimensional polygons for whom the very notion of three-dimensional creatures inspires [[Cosmic Horror]]. When a Flatlander is [[Pals Withwith Jesus|befriended by a]] 3-dimensional sphere, he literally [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|Cannot Grasp The True Form]] without touching it. And a cube looks like an [[Eldritch Abomination]], constantly changing shape at various angles.

{{quote| "Time has stopped for everyone but you," said Sweeper patiently. "Actually that sentence is [[Lies to Children|wrong in every particular, but it's quite a useful lie]]."}}

*:* Death gets this whenever he interacts with [[Muggles|humans]], who seem confused because ''someone'' is talking to them, and it appears to be a skeleton in a cloak, but that's ridiculous, so the mind just rejects it. Children, however, aren't nearly as mentally fixed, so their minds easily wrap around it and they see him as he really is.

**:* And there are occasions when Death CAN be seen. Most notably, in Wyrd Sisters, when Death decides to take the place of an actor who is supposed to play him in a [[Macbeth]] expy, everyone in the audience is expecting to see death and, therefore, does. Death, not being used to such a large audience, gets stage fright. And it is hilarious.

* Mostly averted in [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]]'s work as his [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]]s tend to appear in their true form, which tends to lead to madness in those who see them. Sometimes it's played straight, though. Yog-Sothoth is perceived by mortals as congeries of iridescent spheres because his true body transcends the space-time continuum and we only see the small parts of it that happen to intersect with that particular location in time and space. Nyarlathotep tends to appear in a form of a man because it makes [[Chessmaster|manipulating humans]] easier. He has several less human forms too (1000 to be exact) but all of these are just avatars, or "masks". What his true form looks like is never even hinted, but as he is the soul of the Outer Gods, he might not even have a physical body outside the avatars.

{{quote| Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew they were of memory and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of Earth may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs outside time and the dimensions we know.}}

*:* Indeed, later in the same story Yog-Sothoth explicates what is in fact a major implicit premise behind the whole [[Cthulhu Mythos]]: practically everything we experience goes under this trope, including three-dimensional space, change and time, and the individuality of what we ordinarily think of as different creatures.

**::* Ramsey Campbell's [[Cthulhu Mythos]] [[Homage]] "The Render Of Veils" exploits this variation of the trope to ''very'' disturbing effect.

* The Ellimist always appears in a humanoid form before the [[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]], while his true form is some techno-organic behemoth made out of countless pods, organs, feathers and the like, built around his original avian body, about half of which is still trapped inside a black hole.

* ''Angels'' are like this in [[CSC. LewisS. (Creator)Lewis|CS Lewis]]' [[Space Trilogy]]. Most of the time they just look like a vague shimmer of light; other attempts have produced wheels rolling on distant hills, a painful impact of colors (described as being like the "true sensation" of being hit in the eye by a rock), and (most successfully) a pair of otherworldly humanoids.

* There is a scifisci fi short story about a creature that is not of alien form but of alien ''color'' rendering it impossible to see properly.

** Sounds like "The Colour Out Of Space", one of [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]]'s more famous works.

** Also happened over a decade before in the ''[[Worlds of Power]]'' novelization of ''[[Blaster Master (Video Game)|Blaster Master]]'', in which the [[Big Bad]] takes the form of whatever each person fears.

* In ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', there is a semi-divine being known as a Skinwalker, or Naagloshii. Just to look at it resembles a powerful bestial creature (with the ability to shape-shift). Certainly frightening, but by no means incomprehensible. However, when Harry uses his Wizard's Sight on it, even briefly, the effect is almost mind-shattering. The Naagloshii's true form is so inherently ''wrong'' that it literally takes hours for Harry to dissemble enough to function normally again (and he has to be careful not to think about it otherwise it reduces him to near unconsciousness). It is also implied that the powerful movers and shakers of the supernatural world have similar (if not so utterly abominable) forms). The Queens of the Sidhe, particularly Mothers Summer and Winter, are beings of such intrinsic power that their true forms are likely to be completely incomprehensible.

* The various dietiesdeities in ''[[The Elenium]]'' and it'sits sequel series ''[[The Tamuli]]'' are hinted to be this, seeing as Aphrael can appear as a child, a grown woman, and even two people at the same time.

* In ''[[Babylon Five|Babylon 5]]'', most people see the Vorlons as whatever equivalent their culture has to "angel," but Londo apparently sees nothing. Whether this was because the Vorlon ignored the Centauri race and focused their [[Precursors|ancient genetic manipulation]] on the now-extinct Xon race that also evolved on Centauri Prime, or because Londo is just a [[Jerkass]], is never explained.

* Many portrayals of the [[Star Trek|Q Continuum]], including the episode "Death Wish" of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'', indicate that whenever a human enters the Continuum it looks like normal 4D space-time so that the human mind can comprehend it. In that episode, the crew joins the Q Continuum rebels against the Q old guard. Because the humans (and aliens) cannot comprehend Q weapons, they perceive the situation as the American Civil War... even the weapons they're using against the old guard Q. (Tuvok threatens these Q with their own weapons after being insulted.)

* In ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', angels cannot be comprehended except by their true vessel. Anyone else who glimpses their true form has their eyes melted out of their head, and anyone else (or any''thing'' around anyone else) that is around their true voice experiences what basically amounts to tornado conditions. To even be comprehended, they must first take a vessel. Any improper vessel, even the next closest thing, will eventually explode under the power.

** In another incident (Exodus chapter 24 for those who care) God appeared in full glory for seventy-four leaders of Israel total. The fun part? It mentions that they all [[Did We Just Have Tea Withwith Cthulhu?|ate and drank together]] [[Katamari Damacy|(don't ask what happens when God gets drunk)]]. And it says that God stood on a sapphire pavement. And [[Eldritch Abomination|absolutely]] ''[[Nothing Is Scarier|nothing]]'' [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|else.]]

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: In the ''[[Bhagavad Gita (Literature)|Bhagavad Gita]]'', [[Hindu Mythology|Krishna]] actually shows Arjuna his ([[God]]'s) true form, which is basically a more extreme combination of [[Eldritch Abomination]] and [[Purity Personified]]. Krishna even mentions that Arjuna's mortal mind cannot comprehend all that he is, so Krishna briefly gives Arjuna divine sight so that Arjuna can comprehend. Arjuna ''still'' can't handle it, and begs Krishna to retake human form. But he then goes on to slaughter hundreds of his cousins because that's his job and they were going to die anyway.

* In [[The Quran (Literature)|The Quran]] Moses asks to see God, who replies that the sight of Him to a living mortal would be too much... but He ''will'' reveal Himself to that mountain over there -- whichthere—which immediately crumbles to dust.

* In the theological theory of [[Useful Notes/Pandeism|Pandeism]], it is proposed that those who are somehow able to contact the mind of our Creator as it unconsciously underlies our Universe find that experience so incomprehensible that their tiny human minds automatically defend themselves by interpreting such encounters as conscious communications from culturally familiar conceptions of gods, thereby explaining ''all'' revelation and scripture.

* ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' has the Obyriths, the primordial race of demons spawned by the Abyss eons before life arose on the Material Plane. Their bizarre, horrifyingly-alien appearances grant the Obyriths an ability called "Form of Madness," which causes anyone who so much as ''glances'' at them to be afflicted by an oftentimes permanent type of insanity (phobias, feelings of being consumed by insects, etc).

** Pale Night, the so-called Mother of Demons, is one of the oldest Obyriths but lacks the "Form of Madness" rule - instead she appears as a feminine figure wrapped in a white shroud blowing on a spectral breeze, which occasionally shifts to ''almost'' reveal what's underneath. Her true form is so utterly alien and horrific that anyone unlucky enough to see it (including other demons and possibly ''gods'') drops dead instantly (This occurs [[Shmuck Bait|when someone deliberately tries to see her true form]] or when she suppresses the shroud, which she can do once per day). She doesn't choose to wear the veil, Reality itself imposes it upon her. Think about that, she's so alien that REALITY, existence itself, can't bear to look at her. Even if something sees Pale Night and makes the (nearly impossible) saving throw, all that means is that whoever saw her's mind ''refuses to comprehend the terrible thing it has just seen''. That's right, the only way to prevent dying is to comprehend her true form ''even less''. If a character who succumbs to the Truth Behind the Veil (yes, that's the actual name of the attack) is later revived, they have absolutely no recollection of what Pale Night's true form is aside from a feeling of sheer horror.

* ''Predators'', a book for ''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken]]'' by [[White Wolf]], introduces a being known only as the Unseen, which is [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]]. It's said that its form is so blasphemous that reality itself refuses to show it (just like Pale Night). The Unseen is uncannily good at hunting werewolf packs, to the point that some suggest it's a weapon created by a werewolf-hating [[Eldritch Abomination]]. About the only way you learn of its presence is when your guts spill out of a seemingly spontaneous slice in your flesh.

** Also Hell, as presented in ''[[New World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|World of Darkness]]: Inferno'': a place comprised of so much depravity, so much sin, that the human (and supernatural) mind is unable to cope with it, and tries to resolve it into a Hell it can comprehend. Hell's corruption is so pervasive, even ''looking'' at it triggers a check on the [[Karma Meter]], as it worms its way into your soul.

** [[MOTHERMother 3|The?! form...What ofdid]] {{spoiler|[[Spell My Name With an "S"|Giegue]]Porky}} [[MOTHERMother 3|'s attack was inexplicable!do?]]

* The power of Houjuu Nue from ''[[Touhou (Video Game)|Touhou]]'' is this minus the [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation]] part. She can also imbue other things with the same characteristic by placing a "Seed of Non-Identification" on them, although knowing what the actual object is prevents it from working.

** An example of [[Truth in Television]], but here because it's caused by one: as said in the [[Bullet Hell]] page, in [[Touhou (Video Game)|Touhou]]'s ''Imperishable Night'', some parts are so complex that your brain will ''actually stop interpreting data on some parts of the screen, and you can feel it happening''.

* ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'''s Mildly Disturbing Halloween Mask "appears as a moldering, eldritch veil of such manifold depravity, the human eye will not process the sheer enormity of its malevolence, and out of self-preservation will merely show you a brown paper bag with a team colored face painted on it."

* In ''[[The World Ends With You (Video Game)|The World Ends With You]]'', it's impossible to make out the Composer's exact features, even though you can clearly tell who it is. He appears in a shroud of white light, and the artwork is sketchy and hard to focus on.

* The Patriots, when they finally speak, claim this status in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]].'' In fact, they say they're the embodiment of the collective will of the United States itself. They're a pretty [[Unreliable Narrator]], though, and this was debunked in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]].''

* The Wave Existence from ''[[Xenogears (Video Game)|Xenogears]]'' is a fourth-dimensional being that humans are unable to comprehend, and he appears as a vaguely star-like... thing from which waves emanate similarly to the ripples on a pond's surface.

* The attacks of the [[Orochi]] in ''[[The King of Fighters (Video Game)|The King of Fighters]]'' involve a lot of whole-screen flashes and invisible hits--buthits—but more mysteriously, the special moves are unnamed. (... as long as [[Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (Video Game)|Orochi's clone Mizuchi]] doesn't count).

* In ''[[Shin Megami Tensei (Franchise)|Shin Megami Tensei]]: [[Strange Journey]]'', ''all'' demons are [[Invisible Monsters]] to regular humans. When a third (and [[The Chessmaster|not entirely benevolent]]) third party grants the Investigation Team the Demon Summoning Program, they can "see" the demons... as blobs of unidentifiable static who speak only gibberish. You must fight and defeat these foes in order to identify them and be able to translate their speech.

** "Thou canst not comprehend what I have done"--Yggdrasil—Yggdrasil

* Tohno Shiki of [[Tsukihime (Visual Novel)|Tsukihime]] can see the 'death' of anything that has a flaw, but since human brains can't truly comprehend death as it applies to nonliving things, Shiki has to struggle to kill inanimate objects. He can even kill conceptual things like time or disease, although this places so much stress on his brain it nearly kills him. There are also beings who simply have no 'death', and thus cannot be killed, such as Arcueid during the night (which Shiki finds out to his chagrin during Ciel's route.)

* ''[[Orions Arm|Orion's Arm]]'' takes a slightly different approach. Understanding the mind of the archailects is impossible for a normal human. And actually understanding their physical form is pretty difficult too because they exist as multiple planet sized objects.

* A good many [[SCP Foundation (Wiki)|SCPs]] are likely to qualify, although most are written as mundane things with strange properties, rather than strange things appearing as mundane things.

* It is implied in [[The Slender Man Mythos]] that this is one of Slendy's characteristics, given that he has been know to grow [[Combat Tentacles]], his use of both On- and [[Offscreen Teleportation]], and taking into account the lack of distinguising (read: [[The Blank|ANY]]) facial features.

* Robin from ''[[Teen Titans (Animationanimation)|Teen Titans]]'' sees the entrance to the afterlife as a regular wooden door with LIFE AND DEATH written on it.

{{quote| '''Beast Boy''': "I can't believe the afterlife has a sense of humor."<br />

{{quote| '''Dib''': Who...what are you, and---why did you transform into giant ''shoes?'' <br />

'''Meekrob''': [[Energy Being|We are beings of pure energy]]. [[A Form You Are Comfortable With|This is merely a form that your human brain can understand]]. <br />

'''Dib''': But---you just looked like aliens before you turned into shoes.<br />

'''Meekrob''': Hmm...yes. But you couldn't ''comprehend'' that.<br />

* The alien Vok in ''[[Beast Wars (Animation)|Beast Wars]]:[[Transformers]]'' capture Optimus Primal and communicate with him. But to do so, they first scan his memory banks for what he would consider a figure of authority --theyauthority—they choose to manifest as the disembodied head of [[Satan|Unicron]]. They're actually creepy glowing energy skull things that [[Orcus Onon His Throne|do very little]].

* The color magenta does not exist in the human visible spectrum, and is instead made up by the brain to bridge the gap between red and violet. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130928095527/http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/colour_spectrum_magenta_complimentary_bizarre Explanation.]

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131102111909/http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html Blind spots]. Scary.

*** It can be expressed, as it is on that page, with recursive stacks of exponents, which are themselves used recursively 64 times, [[Mind Screw|all the better to make your head explode with, my dear.]] Even the first of these 64 terms is incomprehensibly huge; far, far bigger than the number of atoms the Universe could hold if they were packed together as tightly as physically possible, let alone the much smaller number of atoms it ''actually'' contains. And that number is subjected to the same ludicrously fast increasing process ''sixty-three more times''. And, heck, you could just continue past 64 cycles up to, say, a Googolplex of cycles, and then...actually, [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|let's not go there.]]

** We don't even need to resort to very large numbers for indescribably. The amount of numbers between, say, 0 and 1 is a ''greater infinity'' than the amount of possible permutations of words in any language. This means that the total amount of numbers between 0 and 1 is more--significantlymore—significantly more--thanmore—than the total amount of possible ways to describe numbers; therefore there must be many numbers between 0 and 1 that ''cannot be described.''

** Apparently, a [[The HitchhikersHitchhiker's Guide to Thethe Galaxy|restaurant]].

** A [[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (Webcomic)|restaurant with poor service]]. [[Crowning Moment of Funny|The worst]].

* Despite the fact that imaginary numbers are [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]], they actually have, more or less, practical and perhaps physical applications. [[That Other Wiki]] [[wikipedia:Complex number#Applications|has plenty of examples]].

{{quote| [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!]]}}

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