the-only-jam

my name is just Jam but I stuck :(

I'm somehow 20, and a profesional sound designer currently looking for work! I Also like robots and Gals + some plants too

Ask me anything currently, I'm still learning a lot, like media, people, english, memes etc. Thanks to my gf for the help!


graham
@graham

ME, AFTER A LONG DRAG ON SOME HERB MY GRASS TYPE POKEMON MADE: It's just like, how can Giovanni be the mafioso to worry about in a world where all the veterinarians and all the cops are members of the same family? That's just straight nepotism, you know?


Scampir
@Scampir

Celadon Game Corner was a front for the Team Rocket Hideout, and made money off of child-gambling


Twinkee
@Twinkee

With all the TMs, items, and rare pokemon a 12 year old could wring out of the Game Corner, I don't think they were profiting off the gambling.


Scampir
@Scampir

You think they're buying those?


estrogen-and-spite
@estrogen-and-spite

Celadon game corner being a way for Team Rocket to offload items that were too hot to handle onto children makes so much sense though.

I’ve always had a headcanon that Giovanni (in the games, not the anime) is a former Pokemon champion that got bored. He has everything he needs, he’s not in it for the money. He’s in it for the thrills. That’s why he makes himself the hardest gym on the continent, that’s why he was interested in those fossils, that’s why he had his scientists make Mewtwo: he was desperate for a real challenge.

And that was why he was so calm about this 12 year old tears his empire apart. Because he’s actually thrilled. Here we have a real challenge, someone who can give him a proper fight.

This is also why we find Red on top of a mountain in Gold and Silver, and why he just wearily fights us without a word. After becoming the champion and defeating Mewtwo…Red realized he understood how Giovanni became Giovanni, how after spending your formative years in Pokemon battles you can lose sight of the Pokemon and just become obsessed with the battles.

I like to think beating Red on that mountain gave him perspective as he walked down, all his Pokemon fainted, realizing Giovanni was wrong and that he was in danger of being the same kind of wrong. That focusing on the challenge meant you lost sight of the bonds with your Pokemon. That he apologized to them after they were healed, gave them all hugs, and promised them they could rest after one more fight.

Then he went back to Giovanni and explained this all in the only language the older man would understand: a final battle. Did Giovanni learn his lesson? Would he keep working on his criminal empire?

Maybe. Maybe not. Either way it wasn’t Red’s problem anymore.

Red took his championship winnings right now and runs the largest Pokemon ranch on the planet, where all his captured Pokemon are now free to live their lives if they choose and if they leave, he only asks that they say gooodbye so he doesn’t worry. Ever so often, some kid comes by to challenge the one time champion, and he’ll do so with whatever mons are willing to fight. Some of those kids comment how easy the new Viridian city gym leader is.

Giovanni comes by for those fights. Once a year. He loses every time. There’s been no sign of team rocket. Every time Giovanni thanks Red. Never explains why, but Red gets its.

Sometimes you need to be kept humble.


estrogen-and-spite
@estrogen-and-spite

For the record in this headcanon Blue and Oak finally had a proper talk about Blue constantly feeling like Oak was overlooking him and that’s why he lashed out at people around him, and Oak apologized and got them both therapy.

During that therapy Oak finally just told Blue that he was asking everyone if they were a boy or a girl not because he’d gone senile, but because he hoped asking would make Blue more comfortable asking that question inside. Oak had seen the signs but everything said not to pressure a person into coming out, but he wanted to help with puberty blockers since that would be relevant very soon.

Transition is easier in a world of potions and now going by Azure, she’s much happier these days.

Part of Azure’s healing process was apologizing to Red for the endless bullying, but after dealing with an actual mafia Red was like “yeah we’re cool. I mean I did tell everyone on the continent your name was Asshole so I’m not blameless. Also she/her from now on? Awesome.”

They weren’t close friends right away because just because someone apologized doesn’t mean you let them back into your life right away, but they are in the short list of “former champions”. Azure went on to work at and eventually become the director of the Safari Zone and reshape it into something better, so it’s an actual nature preserve as opposed to a legalized hunting ground. Pokemon that are particularly traumatized or not able to fit in to the zones’s habitat needed somewhere to go, and Azure couldn’t think of anyone better than Red.

He was and is happy to help, especially because helping Pokemon like that would be great therapy for Mewtwo. This brought the two into contact more often and, over time, a spark lit between them. Pikachu and Venasaur encouraged it, but Charizard and Blastoise took longer - but they did come around after talking to Azure’s Pokemon and hearing how she’s changed.

Giovanni showed up at the wedding. He didn’t speak to anyone, save to briefly greet Azure by her chosen name. Other than that there was a clear understanding between these three former champions.

Giovanni never stopped those yearly visits. And when there were some issues with Azure and Red adopting due to archaic laws, Azure vented when Giovanni could hear, and three months later every gym leader was calling for inclusive laws, because honestly it’s the year of Archeus 20XX we should be past that, and privately they were ashamed it required Giovanni, of all people, to bring this to their attention.

Mewtwo and Giovanni spoke once. Mewtwo said if Giovanni ever went too far, Mewtwo would leave Red’s ranch. Nothing else needed to be said. Some wrongs can’t be forgiven. Mewtwo was fine staying here while Azure and Red lived. When they passed, Mewtwo go looking for what came next.

Azure and Red adopted Green a year later, and when that little bundle of chaos grabbed Mewtwo’s ears and looked them dead in the eyes before saying “Kitty,” Mewtwo (now sometimes Kitty) decided immortality meant they could stay perhaps a bit longer.

And ever so often, waking up next to the man she never expected to love, Azure will give him a gentle kiss as she leaves for work and look over her shoulder before Zapdos gives her a lift to the Safari zone, and she gives him an impish grin, and Red smiles and says “don’t you dare” but he doesn’t actually mean it, he thinks this is cute, and she’s already speaking.

“Smell ya later, babe.”


estrogen-and-spite
@estrogen-and-spite

Now I want to write a story1 (Which would take place before Green/Leaf was adopted by Red and Azure) where Kris (Canonical woman protagonist from Crystal) approaches Red because she needs help, and she knows he knows Giovanni. Giovanni's old scientist is still active and working. Project Mewtwo was shut down, but someone else has scooped up that scientist and has started a new project to create the ultimate pokemon, but they're not using Mew's DNA.

They're using a recovered leaf of Celebi. The pokemon that can casually time travel.

The idea of someone with Mewtwo's power but the ability to travel through time is terrifying and they need to stop them. But Kris is struggling to do this alone. She's gone through the whole plot of Gold/Silver/Crystal so she's tired, the same exhaustion Azure now recognizes all former Champions share: all former Champions but her. Maybe she didn't hold the title long enough, but deep down it's because she doesn't feel like a champion. The boy she used to be won that title, and claiming it is claiming the little shit she used to be. But Kris has the same lethargy that her husband and Giovanni has. All of them are trainers who are capable of taking on this threat, but none of the three of them have the fight in them anymore.

They got what they wanted and realized with that struggle finished they are empty. They are happy now - or at least Red and Kris are, she can't get a read on Giovanni - but they don't have that spark, the drive to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Azure didn't lose that spark, because she didn't really want to be the Champion. She wanted to be herself, and she wanted her grandfather's approval, and she wanted to feel like she belonged in her own skin...and none of those could be found by being a Pokemon Champion. That was a goal she had set for herself to hide the real things she yearned for. Not like the other three, where that was truly what they wanted.

And she realizes none of them can do it. They don't have the spark anymore. Mewtwo agrees. But Azure never really cared about being the best, so she is fine. She could do this.

The people who took Celebi's leaf and are making Celetwo2 have a lab deep in a region we've never seen before, one where humans only live in outposts but don't have actual settlements, a region that seems actively hostile with strange, wild pokemon.

So Azure goes to do what the rest can't. Mewtwo is of course coming with her because they aren't letting some other poor being go through what they did - and they're the only one on the planet who has a chance to reason with the upgraded Celebi if it either is born before they can stop it or already will be born and so came back from the future to protect it's own creation. Other pokemon can't be brought safely into the Pokewilds, but Azure can capture and train new ones - who may listen because Pokewild pokemon respect strength and she's going with Mewtwo.

From there we'd have the story of a trans woman and Mewtwo going on an adventure together, discovering new pokemon, and fighting against a sinster, shadowy organization that seems to be built on the backs of everything Team Rocket once had been working on, and finally discover who's behind it all:

In this timeline Lance didn't teach a young boy the value of treating his pokemon like friends. Is this timeline Kris thought the little criminal she'd been dealing with her entire adventure had just gotten away. But no: Silver, Giovanni's son, is the one behind this. Now older, Silver has learned the truth of his heritage and is doing all of this, every bit of it, to use Celetwo to wind back time and prevent Giovanni from abandoning him in the first place.

The rest of the story unfolds as a tale about learning to heal from the past, that you can't go back and undo what was done, that sometimes sorry isn't enough but sometimes you owe yourself the healing, and that if you want to repair something that is broken you can only do it by moving forward and not going backwards.

Also yes Celetwo does come into existence, does come back and battle Mewtwo, and Mewtwo has to make the conscious decision not to join Celetwo, that maybe humanity does deserve to exist, so he hijacks Celetwo's power and sends her back in time, back thousands of years...

Where she becomes the Pokewild, her unresolved hatred of humanity festering for millennia until this very day. Now that the loop is closed she can contact Mewtwo and ask them why, why they fight like a hero when humanity made them to be monsters? And Mewtwo finally says that famous line:

“I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”

Did Celetwo listen? Did it make things better? Who's to say?

Sometimes Azure remembers that Celetwo could become an entire forest. Sometimes she looks at the little girl she adopted, with leaf green hair and a deep love for Mewtwo, and she wonders if a pokemon could become a jungle what else she could become, and sometimes...sometimes she puts those questions aside, because Leaf is her daughter and she loves her no matter where and when she came from.

The Pokewilds become calmer after that. The Safari zone is able to establish camps there and keep the area free from human abuse but allow for non harmful pokemon research. Silver and Giovanni reunite and what happens in that conversation is never known to Red or Azure, but after that Giovanni's demeanor during those yearly visits, and sometimes Silver watches over Leaf when Red and Azure need a date night. Kris sticks around for a bit, and while nothing materially changes for her, seeing that there is a life after being the Champion, seeing Red and Azure have a family and everything...well.

It helps a lot to know healing is possible. As as she rides Lugia back home, she considers that maybe she should have told she had Celebi safely with her that whole time, but...well, if the little time traveler wanted out of his pokeball, Kris couldn't have stopped him anyway.

And now, finally, the end.


  1. I don't actually have time to do this.

  2. I wouldn't call it this but since I don't have time to write this.


the-only-jam
@the-only-jam

1 saving this so maybe one day it could work out
2 Pokémon world politics are fascinating


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