pokémon headcanon

[kuruk22]

Just to get it all down for future reference... a work in progress (will add on as it develops).

Not definitive (I might break my headcanon to go in another direction for some fics), but this is what I believe... most of the time.

Comments

[kuruk22]

In my Big Bang fic, I'm going off of what you outlined here - Red taps into their life force and directs them that way, though it's purely instinctual.

I subscribe to all of your numbered theories about Red (and pokémon training in general), hence my mention of Red having Aspergers syndrome. Some individuals - Wikipedia has a pretty good article on historical figures who were speculated to have autism and another on confirmed individuals here - with Aspergers and autism are extremely brilliant because their condition has wired their mind in a certain way. The HBO movie on Temple Grandin comes to mind, which articulated what I'm attempting to here very well... There's a scene where the actress playing Temple Grandin describes how she came up with the idea for sweeping curved corrals and more humane methods of cow slaughter because she thinks the way they do. It was this unique connection, in addition to her intelligence, that allowed her to conceptualize and implement these ideas. I believe that situation parallels Red's. Red's condition renders him unable to connect to other people as easily as say, Gold or Leaf would, and this is due to the fact that his thought patterns are nearly identical to his pokémon's, thus making him a nearly unparalleled pokémon trainer.

[solarpillar]

But Asperger's is in the autism spectrum isn't? And the signature symptom of autism is lack of interest in other humans because they are not attuned this way. But Red here is obsessed with Green, even if he cannot truly communicate with him, so what does this mean? Did Red classify Green as something other than human? Why didn't Red see Green as an "incomprehensible other kind" AKA human and avoid/ignore him like he would with other humans? Why all the attempts of communication?

[kuruk22]

It is, and while it does put him in a position where it's incredibly difficult to communicate with other humans, he still wants to relate to them. Not all of them, mind you. But in regards to people who he's grown up with and have shown him love and acceptance at some point - Green, Leaf, his mother, Professor Oak - he very much values their presence in his life and wants to keep them there. I don't think all autistic people don't want to relate to others, I just believe that the way their brain is wired makes it extremely difficult to.

[solarpillar]

Sorry, that was a lack of research from my part. It appears that only non-Asperger autists are not interested in humans and Aspergers are interested, just not good at it.

I thought they weren't because there was this experiment at one point that showed where normal people and autistic people tend to focus in a movie. The normal audience focused primarily on human faces. The autists tend to focus on other things and avoid the faces (things like, there is a human body here, there's a table there, there's a painting on the wall, etc. rather than this is a female person who is sad and next to her is a man who is laughing, etc.) the conclusion of the experiment (according to the person writing the paper, anyway) was that autists weren't interested on humans. Instead of seeing [humans, maybe in X context] they see [object W, object Y, object Z etc. in X]. There was a lack of focus on humans and just treat them as neutral information. I guess that was why they didn't feel the need of interacting humans, because it didn't mean more than interacting with a table or a tree. (That's on a purely social level; if you ask them which to save between a kitten and a painting they'd probably still pick kitten.) Maybe that's what makes them "see everything" because what normal people tend to ignore/rule as not important they take it in without discrimination. I cannot remember the name of the experiment, only that I saw it while doing research for a film analysis homework or something. Over 3 years ago.

The autism spectrum is rather huge, so I guess that test doesn't mean much anymore or it was more precise (limited to one type of autism) but I don't remember.