Pokemon Headcanons

[Irako of the Desert]

Share what headcanons you have about Pokemon and the Pokemon universe in general.

 

[Murkrow]

I only play the games so 'canon' refers to them rather than the anime or anything else. Except for ones that are quite common theories that get mentioned a lot like ditto being a failed mew clone, here are some of my headcanons:


Pokémon only obey you if they respect you. Usually they obey you since they only get themselves caught if they think you're worthy. The reason you need badges for traded Pokémon to obey you isn't some inherent quality of the badges, but because it's the game's only way of measuring how good of a trainer you are. The reason evil teams use Zubat and Rattata is because they can only manage to get weaker Pokémon to think they're worthy trainers.

Pokémon evolve when traded because they're worried they're not good enough to be wanted by anyone, so they evolve to make it less likely they'll be traded again.

Despite Orre having hovercars and lots of games having holograms and GSC having a time machine, I think the games are all set in present day, it's just that the existence of Pokémon throughout history changed how technology developed.

Gardevoir is the "embrace Pokémon" so I'm guessing they can make the spike through their chest able to pass through solid objects if they want. Otherwise embracing would end badly.

Pachirisu and Emolga are related to Pikachu somehow. EDIT: And Dedenne

Arceus created the universe but it's still descended from Mew. Because magic.

Pokémon get free healthcare because the world's economy is so dependent on battling that they'd lose a lot of money otherwise. Also it'd be kind of mean for them not to, considering winners of battles take money from the losers, the losers being the ones most in need of healing their Pokémon. Also the existence of healing machines probably makes it super cheap anyway.

Sabrina's HGSS redesign never happened LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

Cubone's helmet is a skull but it isn't its mother's, it's just an outer skull thing it was born with.
Kangaskhan isn't born with a baby, that's just because the games don't have sprites of them without babies. Also I'm not a biologist but doesn't having a pouch not make sense when they lay eggs?

There are some headcanons I have that sort of make sense but I haven't thought them through all the way yet.
Like what happens inside a Pokéball and PC boxes. And I'm still trying to come up with a headcanon about whether Pokémon who have clothes actually have clothes or if it's like hair and it grows back or what.

 

[Spoon]

Orre, even though it's on the same landmass as Unova, has a lot of non-Unova Pokémon because there's been a lot of importation of non-native species. This was an issue before Team Cipher came along, but the team certainly hasn't helped matters. Many of them have overtaken the native species making sightings of the later super rare.

Diglett's design underneath is pretty cut and dry. Probably a stubby looking mole thing.

Pokémon take a bit to get used to their new bodies when they evolve.

Blue's Raticate didn't die; he just boxed it because he wasn't fairing too well in battles. I mean he did already catch 40 kinds of Pokémon at that point.

 

[Murkrow]

I've convinced myself that the two Espurr at the back of the Daycare are plotting their escape.

 

[Equinoxe]

Swarms in the earlier games were caused by trainers mass-releasing boxfuls of breeding leftover pokemon.

 

[kyeugh]

Swarms in the earlier games were caused by trainers mass-releasing boxfuls of breeding leftover pokemon.

Swarms in Generation Six are the same thing, except they're Pokémon Team Plasma stole and released.

 

[RespectTheBlade]

Ok, let's see...

All the physical moves that involve manipulating the elements (such as thunderpunch, meteor mash, etc) are possible as a result of an innate psychokinetic abilities in pokemon that distort the space around them. I also like to think it works similar to bending from avatar, i.e. it's only possible when a medium is present (a pokemon underwater, for example, couldn't use any sort of move like fire punch or thunder punch.)

All pokemon have some really weird internal biology that allows them to use several types of moves. The concept of a "flame sac" for fire type pokemon is similar, but I think it's more of like a type of "elements sac" for each pokemon that can generate scores of different effects for special moves. And the quality of this mechanism determines their movepools.

Every pokemon that uses bladed means to attack has their own signature fighting style, though of course some are similar to others.

Elgyem have different lines on their forehead (that they retain as beheeyem) that is specific to their own planets.

To build on that, though, extraterrestrial pokemon such as elgyem and clefairy were once part of advanced societies that were existentially threatened by astronomical disasters (such as nearby supernova explosions or imminent expansions of suns into the red giant phase) and sent out capsules (in the form of meteors) to spread life to other planets. It's the whole concept of panspermia, really, and only a fraction of the pokemon vacated reach the earth. This could possibly explain how pokemon came to earth in the first place. (basically i'm adapting a human idea to a fictional world and believing it works? idk.)

The Pokemon games take place on an alternate version of Earth. (parallel universe, maybe?) Pokemon have always existed, like animals here. New ones are made, but that happens very rarely.

All pokemon introduced in each successive generation already existed. It's like when you go to a new country and eat a food you never knew existed - it's still been there a long time. The only exception to this rule are man-made pokemon and recently discovered extraterrestrial or ancient pokemon.

The pokedex is a ridiculous over-exaggeration of a pokemon's abilities.

TMs and HMs are tutorials rather than disks that you attach to a pokemon's head. TMs were expendable before because they were offered as one-time use downloadable software, unlike the HMs, which were optical discs. The company that produced the TMs online was purchased around Gen V by the company that produced the HMs, and they were able to produce them as software similar to HMs, hence the multi-use.

Each successive gen is only different in the fact that it takes place farther in the future each time. The same is true for the remakes - HG and SS happened after D/P/Pt, but G/S happened before. They're simply more recent visits to an older region.

The HP system itself is not a representation of a pokemon's actual health, but a scoring system. Once enough hits are scored, the pokemon is deemed "unfit for battle" to keep battling safe and fair. Focus Sashes and the like are simply like the concept of an "extra life" and allow the pokemon to survive hits it normally wouldn't.

Pokemon Center visits "reset" your score.

The physical/special split was a set of changed battle rulings- it was complexified to give a better scoring system in competitions. (Fire punch, for example, has always been a physical move, but the old categories for physical and special moves were not recorded at competitions for simplicity, only the move's type was. )

A Honedge can have any blade design, but the sheath is always constant.

Pokemon that are rare in a region are native to another one. Some are rare due to where they live, but others are invasive or newly introduced species. For example, Eevee are native to Kalos (Route 10) and Riolu to Unova (Challenger's Cave)

Absol frequently appeared around Lacunosa and Giant Chasm in B/W, this was where Kyurem was. In B/W2, they were more common in more areas. This was because they anticipated that the region would eventually be frozen.

That's about all I can think of right now.

 

[Superbird]

The pokémon world has lower gravity than Earth.

This would explain how so many characters in the Anime can jump so high, and how pokémon with high weights and disproportionate wing sizes could still suspend themselves in the air.

Also, pokémon are weak. By which I mean, any sort of elements they use and most feats of strength are not /that/ destructive. A human can survive a full-power Thunderbolt from an Electric-type pokémon, which shouldn't be possible in real life. Similarly, people hit with a Flamethrower are only a bit singed, and in FRLG when Loreli's Lapras used Hyper Beam on that one Rocket Grunt, he was only flung back and hit the wall. In general, the 'elements' that pokémon have control over aren't as powerful as they would be in the natural world. An actual lightning bolt would be much stronger than even a Zapdos's Thunder attack.

 

[ultraviolet]

The pokedex is a ridiculous over-exaggeration of a pokemon's abilities.

I like the idea of a pokedex being like a really poorly-moderated wikipedia run mostly by ten-year-olds. it explains why a lot of the heights and weights of pokemon are kind of wack, and why you get entries that are like 'charizard can melt boulders!!!!!!!!!!!'

 

[M&F]

I have an extensive list of them but here's a few.

Contrary to what seems to be the popular belief, the journey undergone by the videogame protagonists is highly exceptional, not normative. Game canon seems to be pretty clear in that starter Pokémon aren't actually starter Pokémon, but just hand-me-downs you get for doing a favor to the local professor, and as a whole they seem to be waaaaay to rare to be given away nily-willy to everyone. And besides, the real world stands as good proof that, if given the chance to own a Charizard, most people would take the hell out of it, so it'd have to be suspect that literally the only person you see toting one around is your rival if you picked Bulbasaur. (so a few of them have Charmander and Charmeleon, but very few)

On a similar vein to the above, the player character has exceptional amounts of natural talent and their abilities with raising Pokémon are not indicative of the average trainer's. Most people out there can only handle at most three of them at once, and preferrably the ones that are easy to raise; and a lot of trainers specialize in a single type of Pokémon because Pokémon of the same type tend to have much of the same needs -- tending to three Ice-types would be much simpler than tending to one Ice-type, one Fire-type and one Electric-type. The fact that the player character can effortlessly handle six at once no matter how difficult they may individually be or how diverse they are is a sign of their great innate skill, and that's why the player character gets lavished with so much praise and doesn't even have too much trouble making it to Champion. But even these supremely talented individuals wouldn't be able to deal with seven at once. It's not an arbitrary League limit or anything, it's just absolutely the furthest anyone has ever managed to go.

Pokéballs aren't suspended motion chambers or anything quite that nice. They also aren't fit for holding Pokémon indefinitely or even for particularly much long, and a trainer who forgets their Pokémon in the Pokéballs very often is a severely neglectful one. Their primary purposes are simply containment and convenient transportation; you'll still have to provide some kind of decent lodging outside when it's time for them to sleep.

Coupling these two paragraphs above together, the general idea is that training Pokémon is actually hard.

Pokémon Centers aren't free hospitals. First and foremost, they weren't even originally built for any healing-related puproses; in the past, places where trainers met often came to be known as "Pokémon Centers", and some enterpreneuring souls took to establishing lounges around those places. They eventually become more of an official, standardized thing as Pokémon Leagues became more organized. In any case, the spot where you drop your Pokémon off isn't a fully-equiped medical facility, but something more akin to a nurse's office in elementary school. They can deal with most things that would be legal in a Pokémon battle, but anything more serious than that will evoke need of more traditional, non-free animal healthcare. And if you're in, say, Pacifidlog, while even they have a Pokémon Center, a sufficiently serious problem with your Pokémon may have you hauling them somewhere else.

Famous Pokémon Trainers are to Pokémon society something akin to what famous soccer players are to our society. They may have a lot of fans and get a lot of interviews and respect and royalty treatment, but they won't exactly be politicians or diplomats or policemen (although they can sometimes play vigilante, as we have seen frequently), and anyone who doesn't care much for the sport probably won't even know who they are.

And there's a whole narrative of how Pokémon training started out and how it gradually turned into what we see in the games, but I think this post is long enough as is now.

 

[sv_01]

I have one about Yamask and Cofagrigus. You know how Yamask used to be a human? And how Cofagrigus is said to eat people? I think only the females do that. I think the human soul is a third side to their reproduction. Some sort of... forced reincarnation thingie. Without that, there would be no baby, just a lump of dead ectoplasm and a plain disc. In a city, there is probably a lot of human ghosts floating around, but ancient tombs ward them away somehow. So killing archeologists it is.

 

[shy ♡]

This is fun c:

Contrary to what seems to be the popular belief, the journey undergone by the videogame protagonists is highly exceptional, not normative. Game canon seems to be pretty clear in that starter Pokémon aren't actually starter Pokémon, but just hand-me-downs you get for doing a favor to the local professor, and as a whole they seem to be waaaaay to rare to be given away nily-willy to everyone. And besides, the real world stands as good proof that, if given the chance to own a Charizard, most people would take the hell out of it, so it'd have to be suspect that literally the only person you see toting one around is your rival if you picked Bulbasaur. (so a few of them have Charmander and Charmeleon, but very few)

On a similar vein to the above, the player character has exceptional amounts of natural talent and their abilities with raising Pokémon are not indicative of the average trainer's. Most people out there can only handle at most three of them at once, and preferrably the ones that are easy to raise; and a lot of trainers specialize in a single type of Pokémon because Pokémon of the same type tend to have much of the same needs -- tending to three Ice-types would be much simpler than tending to one Ice-type, one Fire-type and one Electric-type. The fact that the player character can effortlessly handle six at once no matter how difficult they may individually be or how diverse they are is a sign of their great innate skill, and that's why the player character gets lavished with so much praise and doesn't even have too much trouble making it to Champion. But even these supremely talented individuals wouldn't be able to deal with seven at once. It's not an arbitrary League limit or anything, it's just literally the furthest anyone has ever managed to go.

I believe something along these lines - except it's a lot more to do with violence. (Maybe that's what you believe as well?) Pokemon battling, in my mind, is completely immoral, and I'll go over that later, but the sheer violence of it forces most trainers out because their bodies can't handle the hiking over entire continents thing, taking hits from superpowered animals thing, or just plain seeing their own pokemon being demolished over and over again. Especially when they aren't good at it and they end up having pokemon dying on them or getting chased and nearly killed by giant spiders or bees or what-have-you. The PC is one of those rare people with the skill and perhaps lack of morality who is capable of enduring these hardships till the end.

(Also, people you meet along the way with fewer pokemon - they might've had more than that before, but they died. Happens a lot.)

Famous Pokémon Trainers are to Pokémon society something akin to what famous soccer players are to our society. They may have a lot of fans and get a lot of interviews and respect and royalty treatment, but they won't exactly be politicians or diplomats or policemen (although they can sometimes play vigilante, as we have seen frequently), and anyone who doesn't care much for the sport probably won't even know who they are.

I think of 'em kinda like rogue knights? Sell-swords kinda?? When you think about it, arming your entire population with pokemon is a great way of defending yourself. There's not much talk of war in the games but there is Lt. Surge, who battled with electric types... Should war ever arise, the greatest trainers would surely lead the charge, with the elite four at the head.

I like the idea of a pokedex being like a really poorly-moderated wikipedia run mostly by ten-year-olds. it explains why a lot of the heights and weights of pokemon are kind of wack, and why you get entries that are like 'charizard can melt boulders!!!!!!!!!!!'

I think of it more like myths, like those entries were written down centuries ago in the here-be-dragons era?? And never updated since haha.

The pokémon world has lower gravity than Earth.

This would explain how so many characters in the Anime can jump so high, and how pokémon with high weights and disproportionate wing sizes could still suspend themselves in the air.

Also, pokémon are weak. By which I mean, any sort of elements they use and most feats of strength are not /that/ destructive. A human can survive a full-power Thunderbolt from an Electric-type pokémon, which shouldn't be possible in real life. Similarly, people hit with a Flamethrower are only a bit singed, and in FRLG when Loreli's Lapras used Hyper Beam on that one Rocket Grunt, he was only flung back and hit the wall. In general, the 'elements' that pokémon have control over aren't as powerful as they would be in the natural world. An actual lightning bolt would be much stronger than even a Zapdos's Thunder attack.

I kinda like to think humans are a very weak normal-type pokemon. :p With no moves except like, tackle, growl, etc. Otherwise there's no way they'd take those hits.

Anyhow like I was talking above re: morality of pokemon battling - when you get right down to it, you'd never let your actual real life pets fight. Dog fighting/cock fighting is horrible. Using the excuse that the pokemon want to do it - okay, but when you look at like, boxing, or even football, the repercussions of the violence are horrible?? I mean boxing more obviously because it's moreso about the beating each other up, but yeah. And you just kinda have to think about the people who are drawn to boxing, tbh. It's not really the best kinda people (Muhammad Ali...)

I tend to think of the games as being more like a nuzlocke than a regular game, so pokemon actually die a lot. Because it makes a lot more sense since they're being super violent??? And these are, for the most part, animals. I mean, not every pokemon is super-intelligent. If they're animals that get their kicks off by being violent, they're gonna be violent. So there'll sometimes be rules like 'no killing' or whatever in battle but yeah, in general, if you're punching things you can't really control what happens to internal organs?? Or setting things on fire?? Eh. (Obviously the other rules of nuzlocke like only catching the first thing on the route don't apply haha.)

So in my idealized pokemon there'd be like, a flag-football version of pokemon battle. Or like pro-bending. It's so much smarter to do it that way anyhow.

 

[Murkrow]

Using the excuse that the pokemon want to do it

As much as they went into the morality of battles in Black/White they really did gloss it over. I remember there's one part in Chargestone Cave I think, where you and Cheren meet N.
Cheren has a speech which I can't remember exactly, but it pretty much boiled down to "I understand what Team Plasma are saying but they're wrong because Pokémon want to battle because [no reason]
They're allowed to have their own opinions but theirs are still objectively wrong"

I wish they did go into it a bit more so that there is a way to explain how it isn't either immoral or make all of the Pokémon involved have really violent personalities.
Like maybe HP is actually in in-universe thing rather than just something we see? Maybe Pokémon really are super powerful and can do what the Pokédex say they can do but "battling" to them is more like what arm wrestling is to us. It's pretty safe, it's just a test of who is better than actually trying to harm the other.





I am enjoying the idea that the governments of the world let battles happen so that they don't have to find their own military or anything, they just try to encourage the best trainers to emerge from their own territory.

 

[shy ♡]

This is a nuzlocke that deals a lot with the dog-fighting aspect of pokemon and it's really great I recommend it a lot. There's another nuzlocke that looks at trainers from a militia standpoint but idk if I can find it... it might actually be that but idk. 9_9 sighs. I wish I bookmarked things better.

Anyhow I don't think the games will ever really deal with the violence aspect better than in BW because it would ruin the fun. You don't wanna think too much about whether it's ok to beat up animals when playing, eh?? Anyhow Plasma's motives might've been right but their methods sure weren't.

 

[M&F]

I believe something along these lines - except it's a lot more to do with violence. (Maybe that's what you believe as well?) Pokemon battling, in my mind, is completely immoral, and I'll go over that later, but the sheer violence of it forces most trainers out because their bodies can't handle the hiking over entire continents thing, taking hits from superpowered animals thing, or just plain seeing their own pokemon being demolished over and over again. Especially when they aren't good at it and they end up having pokemon dying on them or getting chased and nearly killed by giant spiders or bees or what-have-you. The PC is one of those rare people with the skill and perhaps lack of morality who is capable of enduring these hardships till the end.

(Also, people you meet along the way with fewer pokemon - they might've had more than that before, but they died. Happens a lot.)

Violence is definitely a part of the narrative I have in mind, but in a rather more subdued way. It was entirely out of control at first, and Pokémon were very much prone to dying in battle, but modern Pokémon Leagues try to regulate it with strict rulings. It's not as if you absolutely can't go over the limit for it, but if you do you may very well get reported to the authorities. And of course, it raises an interesting question -- how much violence exactly is the acceptable level? For one reason or another, not everyone is satisfied with how Pokémon Leagues answer that question. (Incidentally, Battle Frontiers run on different rules from Pokémon Leagues, includingly in so far as they can be a lot more lax about the violence levels, and the differing ruleset is pretty much the whole reason why they exist)

Also, the hiking is another way in which your standard Pokémon journey isn't so standard. It's not all that uncommon, specially among the ones who fancy themselves more hardcore (eg Ace Trainers), but not all Pokémon trainers travel; some of them, specially in crowded urban centres, do well enough with just practicing the sport near home.

In that vein, there are huge differences between Pokémon training casually and Pokémon training for keeps. Some of what you've described can be part of the latter, in differing intensities, but definitely not very present in the former.

I think of 'em kinda like rogue knights? Sell-swords kinda?? When you think about it, arming your entire population with pokemon is a great way of defending yourself. There's not much talk of war in the games but there is Lt. Surge, who battled with electric types... Should war ever arise, the greatest trainers would surely lead the charge, with the elite four at the head.

I think Pokémon as civilian defense is a much, much more recent idea than most variations of Pokémon-based violence. Of course, military and criminals are pretty much always the first people to find terrible uses for new technology, but it took a while to catch on with the masses.

I think of it more like myths, like those entries were written down centuries ago in the here-be-dragons era?? And never updated since haha.

That could be part of the problem. 10yo gets ass kicked by Dragon Tamer, asks them about Dragon Pokémon, gets whole bunch of folksy wisdom instead of proper scientific information. And then writes it right down, word by word, as if it were just that.

Anyhow like I was talking above re: morality of pokemon battling - when you get right down to it, you'd never let your actual real life pets fight. Dog fighting/cock fighting is horrible. Using the excuse that the pokemon want to do it - okay, but when you look at like, boxing, or even football, the repercussions of the violence are horrible?? I mean boxing more obviously because it's moreso about the beating each other up, but yeah. And you just kinda have to think about the people who are drawn to boxing, tbh. It's not really the best kinda people (Muhammad Ali...)

While I'm not big on the whole "Pokémon morality can only ever possibly be squeaky-clean" thing, and in my headcanon timeline the morality of it (as well as the public perception of it) has definitely changed a whole lot across time, I wouldn't go so far as to regard it as outright animal abuse, as long as one doesn't cross certain lines. There are definitely more moral ways to go about battling than others, though.

I tend to think of the games as being more like a nuzlocke than a regular game, so pokemon actually die a lot. Because it makes a lot more sense since they're being super violent??? And these are, for the most part, animals. I mean, not every pokemon is super-intelligent. If they're animals that get their kicks off by being violent, they're gonna be violent. So there'll sometimes be rules like 'no killing' or whatever in battle but yeah, in general, if you're punching things you can't really control what happens to internal organs?? Or setting things on fire?? Eh. (Obviously the other rules of nuzlocke like only catching the first thing on the route don't apply haha.)

So in my idealized pokemon there'd be like, a flag-football version of pokemon battle. Or like pro-bending. It's so much smarter to do it that way anyhow.

I think my statement is made on when, how and whether the dying happens, but just to tack on -- I'm not sure if I'm running with this as a definitive headcanon, but one time, as part of a Nuzlocke, I described an unspoken bond between trainers and Pokémon which allows trainers to perceive when their Pokémon are at their limits, and also has the Pokémon refuse to keep on fighting even if the trainer tries to push them past that limit -- and it's what's usually referred to as "fainting". (Of course, being that it was in a Nuzlocke, the whole point was that the bond had been severed and nobody could figure out how to battle safe without it. Whoopsie!)

Haha, akin to pro-bending is probably the best way to describe a better regulated Pokémon battle.

 

[sv_01]

The bug bit of Paras is a Nincada. Their eggs aren't very fungus-proof.

Grass-types like the Saur-line which are compatible with both plants and an animal egg group have two reproductive systems that are connected and each activates when the other does. (This also means that the evil zombie mushroom is smart and leaves a bit of the bug alive just to make more slaves.) And in the case of the female, when only one side has a baby, the other one is spawned via parthenogenesis.

In the ancient times, there was only one form of Shellos. And the Gastrodon was part Rock.

The dimensional dragons weren't created by Arceus. They came from a world of their own.

Gulpin is a mutant that was created when a Munchlax and a Grimer tried to eat each other.

Realistic evolution is still a thing. The original lifeforms were Solosis and Slugma with lots of latent stuff.
Some of them took off to space and that's how we got Elgyem (organic) and the meteors (mineral). Oh, and Deoxys might have something to do with the organic guys too...
Clefairy come from a newer wave of space exploration, done by Jigglypuff.
Ghost-type lines could have originated from Psychic-types that died.

Mew has most of the Arceus and Giratina's genetic information along with whatever blueprint material they managed to pull out of the Regis, but can only give birth to creatures with bits of it. It can control which bits. When it isn't trying to make new lifeforms, it just produces Dittos, some of which collect whatever new genetic material turns up.

The Lake Trio made Cresselia from moonlight and psychic energy.

Nevermeltice is just some magical ice strewn around the world to make it colder. Of course Regigigas used some of it...

Elgeyem-line are the aliens that Starmie communicates with.

 

[BOOM! Headshot]

Upon reading the thread title, I immediately thought 'Isn't that Genesect?'. Upon further investigation, I've deduced that it means 'What do you think is real in the pokemon universe'.

Yes, yes. I'm aware that I'm slow of thinking sometimes.

I think that, despite what it shows in the anime and what is inferred in the games themselves, that pokemon eat each other rather than subsisting entirely on berries. It's a messed up ecosystem, otherwise, and the Pokedex entry for Wurmple supports the hypothesis.

I think that if Kyurem ever bonded with both Zekrom and Reshiram at the same time, it wouldn't be able to separate again.

I'm completely convinced that Ditto occasionally inexplicably disappears from the Daycare, only to turn up again after an Egg is produced. This is because [EMPHATICALLY REDACTED].

I also think that Dittos can't breed in the normal way because [REDACTED]*.

Lastly, I think Mewtwo gets around a lot and hides in all kinds of peculiar places, in all sorts of different countries.

*I'm perfectly well aware that there are kids present in the forum. That's why I'm not exploring these hypotheses here, and replacing them with [REDACTED] tags. Also, I think people would like to continue having undisturbed nights when it comes to Ditto breeding.

 

[ultraviolet]

I think of it more like myths, like those entries were written down centuries ago in the here-be-dragons era?? And never updated since haha.

there is something hilarious in professor oak creating the pokedex, and thinking "hmmm, i guess i should put some reference material in here to get it started..." [googles ye olde pokemon myths and legends]...

 

[M&F]

And hey, speaking of myths, Sinnoh's are probably one of the most interesting things in Gen IV, and pondering their meanings definitely goes hand-in-hand with the purpose of this thread.

 

[Butterfree]

I don't really do Pokémon headcanons. I love how much of the world is up for interpretation and like keeping it that way rather than making up a single definitive version in my head. So unless I'm specifically writing a fanfic in the same universe as another, they will probably feature mutually exclusive interpretations of some features of the Pokémon world. That's just how I roll. So, like, the species of Scyther as portrayed in the QftL universe and the species of Scyther as portrayed in Morphic could not be more different, and I embrace that.

Some bits of interpretation have been more or less the same across all my works where they're relevant because they happen to serve the purposes of all these stories well, but I'm entirely open to the possibility that in the future I might think of a story that calls for doing things differently. So while I'm generally not fond of the "Pokémon training is bad and you should feel bad" interpretation of Pokémon and everything I've personally written so far has been set in a world where Pokémon generally want and like trainers and enjoy battling, I've seen it done awesomely and if I were to happen to have a good idea that really calls for Pokémon-training-as-slavery, that's what I'd write.

(EDIT: It just occurred to me the other day that I've actually kiiiiind of done this already. I wrote a Pokémon/The Matrix crossover parody years ago called The Type Chart in which the real world was the Pokémon world, where humans had enslaved all Pokémon and were using them as batteries in exactly the same fashion as the robots in The Matrix.)

I'm completely convinced that Ditto occasionally inexplicably disappears from the Daycare, only to turn up again after an Egg is produced. This is because [EMPHATICALLY REDACTED].

I also think that Dittos can't breed in the normal way because [REDACTED]*.

[...]

*I'm perfectly well aware that there are kids present in the forum. That's why I'm not exploring these hypotheses here, and replacing them with [REDACTED] tags. Also, I think people would like to continue having undisturbed nights when it comes to Ditto breeding.

There are kids present, but the forum rules also feature at the very start a note that the forum makes no effort to be entirely kid-friendly and children are advised to show discretion in what they view. Since this thread is not marked as mature you'd be best off hiding anything kid-unfriendly with [spoiler=Mature]whatever[/spoiler] tags, and obviously if you'd just rather not include them that's fine (though in that case including them in a redacted form seems sort of pointless), but if you actually want to discuss these headcanons, it's allowed.