User:MemyselfandI/Headcanon

Legendaries

• Legendaries come in several tiers of power. At the bottom of the pyramid are the various spritelike legends: Celebi, Jirachi, Manaphy, and Victini. They are akin to minor spirits, and there are many of them. Their power is not infinite, and with some effort they can be defeated. Slightly higher are Shaymin, Darkrai, Cresselia, Regigigas, and most of the legendary trios. While most of them can take down a full team's worth of mons, with proper preparation and incredible skill they can be fought. After that are most of the version legendaries (Ho-oh, Lugia, Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Reshiram, Zekrom, and Kyurem), as well as the Lake Trio and Mew. Against one of these mons, unless you have trained specifically to defeat them, and all your mons are at the absolute pinnacle of their strength, they will almost certainly crush you. Almost at the top are Palkia, Dialga, and Giratina. The odds of any trainer ever defeating one of these three are roughly the same as the odds of your average Sunkern defeating a top percentage Salamence.

• Arceus, of course, far surpasses any other Legendary in power. It is completely invincible, and any evidence to the contrary is solely for its own amusement.

• Mewtwo is not a legendary, due to its artificial status. However, it has power on par with that of even some major legendaries, and is not to be taken lightly. It can and quite likely might make your head explode without much effort.

• The Regis and Genesect, likewise, are not legendaries. Their powers are comparable to minor legends, such as Latii or Shaymin, but they lack dominion over elements of the natural world, and have no followers.

• Latii used to be merely a species of extremely powerful dragons, possibly akin to psuedos. However, due to overcapture and poor knowledge of how to care for them, their numbers have declined greatly and they have been given a protected status (so yes, Brendan/May is pushing the boundaries of the law a little in RSE). They are only seen as legendaries because of their protection of Alto Mare from its frequent natural (or otherwise) disasters.

• Heatran, similarly, is only a rare and extremely powerful volcano-dwelling mon, who is rarely seen due to its chosen habitat. The massive destruction it can cause when not dormant has led to its being dubbed a "spirit of volcanoes" but that is merely a title. However, it is still incredibly strong. Your level 100 pseudo isn't going to provide it with much of a challenge.

• Deoxys is unconfirmed as a legendary. It is unquestionably a Pokemon of great power, but as it is from another world, it cannot be determined how its power level matches that of the mons from that world.

• Mew, unlike most legendaries at its power level, come in multiples. They are rarely seen in the same place twice, and their current purpose, if anything, has not yet been discovered.

• Unown are not individually legendaries, or indeed even remotely powerful. The Unown collective, however, is both. All matter in the universe is composed of Unown, and the world can be reshaped by the patterns they spell out. Unown become powerful in large quantities because the more of them there are, the larger and more complex the commands that they can make are. In addition, Unown can speak to (and more to the point, communicate with) inanimate objects, and move instantaneously through both time and space.

While individual Unown have individual personalities (usually fairly playful, and all sharing the same verbal tic as those in WAAPT), as more Unown gather their minds will link, subsuming the original personalities until only the collective remains. Fortunately, this effect will wear off once the Unown scatter again.

• While minor legendaries occasionally interact with the world, anything on the level of Ho-oh or higher will make itself known once or twice every hundred years, and only in the direst of emergencies. The events surrounding the games qualify.

• Legendaries occasionally manifest avatars of themselves to assist humans as a temporary team member. These avatars are not as powerful as the real deal, but are still a force to be reckoned with.

Culture

• While the legendaries clearly exist in the Pokeworld, how they are perceived and worshipped varies from person to person. While an acceptance of the Pokeverse legends as a pantheon of gods is not unheard of (particularly in Sinnoh, where it is by far the majority religion), many other interpretations exist. Arceus is frequently cited as the only true god, while other legendaries are either of angelic status or merely aspects of Arceus.

• Pokemon training is a common practice, and trainers are usually sent out around the age of 15, if they wish to become a trainer. Trainers replace traditional schooling with abridged online classes, and there is a fairly profitable business in finding better ways to keep trainers educated.

• In both residential and business areas, building owners can mark their buildings with an "open to trainers sign." This will place the building on the virtual map that trainers are given at the start of their journey, and indicate that they are okay with random strangers entering their house and asking questions.

• Many Pokemon have been deemed dangerous, and are forbidden to be caught without sufficient experience (usually in the form of badges, though in some cases a license is required). Some examples: Most pseudos, Volcarona, Shiftry, Ducklett.

Combat

• Stats

HP: All Pokemon (and to a lesser extent Pokeverse!Humans) have a healing factor that would put Wolverine to shame. HP is a reflection of how much injury they can recover from until the strain becomes too much and they collapse.

Note: Yes, this does mean that attacks such as Guillotine, Overheat, Hyper Beam, etc. really are inflicting serious and quite possibly lethal damage. It's just that it doesn't matter so much when the target's insides will magically realign themselves.

Further Note: Also yes, this does mean that your average Pokemon has a much higher pain tolerance than any RL animal.

Attack: The attack stat is measured primarily in raw physical strength. Most physical attacks are little more than brute force, coupled with a little elemental ability and a (usually) rudimentary knowledge of where to hit.

Defense: Defense is pretty simple as well, it's just layers of armor or other things that would make it difficult to inflict serious damage by punching, slashing, stabbing, biting, or otherwise physically attacking somemon.

Sp. Atk: Sp. Atk is the degree of command a mon has over the elements it can access. Darmanitan, for example, while it possesses amazing strength, is not a particularly powerful manipulator of fire. Volcarona, on the other hand, while lacking in strength, possesses an unbelievable degree of power over fire.

Sp. Def: Sp. Def can be caused by many different things. Altaria, for example, uses its cotton and dragon scales to dampen incoming attacks, while an Umbreon projects an ambient obscura field with a similar effect.

Speed: Speed is not a measure of actual top speed. Rather, it is reflective of agility and potential to maneuver within a small space. Running at 70 mph won't help you if you only have a few hundred square feet to work with.

• Moves are not the only ways in which Pokemon can use their abilities. Rather, they are techniques submitted to and approved by major leagues for use in professional battles. In the wild or in friendly battles, improvisation is both possible and likely. The process for creating new legal moves, however, is difficult and a bit complicated, so should be undertaken with caution.

Biology

• Each evolutionary line is a single species, its members are simply different stages of its life and would not be given separate scientific names. The names we see in the games began as simply what adults told their children, but gradually slipped into mainstream culture as "Charizard" was much simpler than saying "final morph of Candela."

• Egg groups are akin to genus, and mons that share an egg group are very closely related. Nobody yet understands how mons can belong to multiple egg groups. And Ditto are just weird.

• While on a macroscopic scale Pokemon easily outcompete any Earthlike fauna, on a microscopic scale things are more even (only so much room for a pyrosac when you're a single cell), and bacteria or other single-celled life resembles that of Earth.

• Braviary and other male-only species occasionally make use of friendly Ditto to propagate their species.

• Diglett's underside is not a mystery. It is a wall of small tendrils and claws, which dig extremely quickly and allow Diglett to tunnel as it does.

Other Canon

Neither the manga nor the anime have any authority here, as I follow neither. TCG might, but it's hard to say.

As for the games, Yellow is the only canon event, because Red is that awesome. The other games are fanfic of varying degrees of quality about amazing trainers who defeat evil teams and befriend/capture legendaries. (Note: The evil teams do exist. However, they are far more subtle, and are usually stopped by police rather than 10-15-year-old children.)