I'M CAPTAIN KIRK

pokeball headcanons:
- pokeballs are all registered to their trainers' name and probably an ID number of some sort associated with that trainer; being captured in a pokeball gives a pokemon a kind of virtual microchip that marks it as belonging to that pokeball and that pokeball only, which is why trying to return a pokemon to the wrong ball or catch an already owned one doesn't work, and why to trade you have to use a special machine instead of just swapping pokeballs. essentially it goes pokemon linked to ball linked to trainer.
-you can't get pokeballs registered in your name until you're ten, but it's very common for people's parents or bigger siblings or friends or whatever to keep a pokemon or two in their name and then trade them over when the real owner comes of age
-you use the same button press to both return and release a pokemon from its ball, the function being determined by the ball itself according to whether it's full or empty, but you have to do a special kind of button press to actually free a pokemon, i.e. break its virtual microchip and link with its ball and return it to the wild. this is to stop people doing that by accident and having to catch their pokemon all over again or losing them entirely.
-balls break if they capture a pokemon but it breaks out because they've already 'used up' their microchip imprinter but it didn't take and they only have the one.
-although pokeballs keep their inhabitants in virtual stasis as energy rather than in any physical form, they still keep their consciousnesses. Balls make it easy to sleep and be unaware of the outside world, but if they resist this they can be dimly aware of what's going on outside and if there's a pressing reason they want out the ball will respond to it. some pokemon never get the hang of this and can't get out even if they really need to; others have perfected it and will get out for the dumbest reasons. depends on the pokemon.

 

i mean the games have trainer IDs pretty much always, so that trainer pass is probably a legal document

 

the anime seems to use your pokedex as your identifying document, to sign up to the league tournaments and such, so i imagine that in reality they're kind of one and the same thing.

 

-there are usually more than eight gyms in a region, as technically anyone can set one up; you have to jump through a fair few hoops though, including becoming a registered pokemon battle referee and qualifying for + making it past the qualifying rounds of at least one League tournament. Quite possibly you're also required to shadow an established gym leader for a bit to make sure you know how the everyday running of a gym works, and you probably also have to file quite a bit of paperwork so you're accountable for everything that happens at your gym, and maybe even take an exam or something. This is why most gym leaders are either a) people who inherited it from the previous gym leader, b) members of an established gym leading family, or c) really really dedicated.

 

anime talk: serena (i think that's her name), one of the Designated Companions of XY, apparently met ash as a wee kiddiwink, and is currently talking about how she wonders how he'll react to seeing her now
she's gonna have a bad time, since everyone knows ash has the memory of a concussed goldfish with alzheimer's

 

honestly a lot of these headcanons of mine are things the anime has probably peed on in the past, but the anime is hardly what you'd call consistent and i'm working with it as best i can, dammit
the games are better, but restrictive when it comes to things like DRAMA, because of their mechanics.
i still want to know how the fuck everyone in the anime tells apart completely identical pokeballs. i'm pretty sure if i was a pokemon trainer i'd just put stickers all over mine

 

[flicks ash on the nose]
where have you suddenly got all this defeatism from, you're ash ketchum, you've never known a defeatism in your life

 

he hasn't been kissed by any stray legendary pokemon recently, that's why he's depressed

 

ah, we've figured it out
the closest thing he's got to rubbing noses with any legendaries at the beginning of XY is being rescued by a mega blaziken and i don't think mega evos count

 

Needs another noofing.

 

i still have a subnautica wiki tab open from when i was pondering the logistics of a fixit fic where the pc of the game finds bart torgal before he dies and they fall in Lurve
i knew i was never gonna writing it, but y'know

 

sometimes i don't feel like i like 'realistic' pokemon art because it doesn't keep the... the basic shape of the pokemon?
like i know shit has to be fudged, but I feel like sometimes the essential shape of the creetur is lost

 

that's why detective pikachu is so good. They mostly look the correct shape, just with realistic textures

 

honestly you know that 'nest of pikachu' drawing that does the rounds every so often, with the mama and tiny baby pikachus?
that. THAT is the pinnacle of realistic pokemon art, because it's, well, realistic, but the shape of the animal is correct
also it's cute as all balls

 

:o idk if i've seen that before?

 

oh lord let me see if i can find it with the artist properly credited and such

 

Ha HA

 

OH THAT IS *SO* CUTE

 

i like that you can tell it's two little boys and two little girls because of the female heart-shaped tail ends but they look really natural and everything

 

in the very first season i think there was an episode with that plot point, and a trainer who did use stickers to identify his.