Pokemon Protags

This is simultaneously my pokemon headcanon containment zone and introducing my Pokemon Trainers that become so different from their OGs that they might as well be considered OCs. I made a lot of these before masters and it's mostly based on stuff from my playthroughs and also when I was a child you will have to take Fire and Leaf siblings from my cold hands.

Blank slate protagonists that get personalities added to them in later iterations isn’t something that I’m not used to since I’ve played other games that have blank protags gain personalities elsewhere, but it is kind of funny when you’ve developed a personality that’s so completely noncanon because of the nature of blank slating. I subscribe to my personal headcanon of “every save game is canon.” That’s going to be a major plot point in other works. This area is mostly a thought explanation because everything else would be located on the trainer/protagonist's respective regional location on the pokemap. I have a lot of weird contradictory headcanons to explain things for my fics and OCs in a way that makes me look like the Pepe Silvia gif

“But if FRLG Red gets called Fire by you sometimes, then FRLG Green should be called Water?” Funnily enough, no. His internal name is Terry. There isn’t a WaterBlue anyways… would the Yellow Equivalent be like, ThunderYellow or LightningYellow? Yellow isn't a gamesverse character, but I like the concept enough that I might have a few headcanons for a "what if."

So like if i had to go for a “canon” line up protag wise so far it’s: Red, Gold, May, Leaf, Dawn, Lyra, Hilbert, Rosa, Calem, May (again), Sun (boy), Gloria, Akari, and then Florian and Juliana. Makes sense? Probably not, but that’s my made up canon.

The trainer thought process...
My thought process for side stuff is… Where do my characterizations come from in like a vacuum.

Well, unfortunately, a lot of my brain tends to revolve around incredibly childish concepts like sprite fight music videos and anime fight battles where people get like cool swords and also DBZ is there but Pokémon isn’t about that, it’s about the Pokémon. Maybe the people sometimes. Sometimes I like making stuff for the people who I play as in the games because sometimes it’s a fun writing exercise to make things up and I guess this is RP. This is closed RP.
These are my trainer muses.

I think it’s interesting to imagine the protag's lives after the game is beat. Where do they go, what’s their hobbies, what will they do next? I could always just use the in game stuff and optional mini game things which I was considering for Nate and Rosa but there aren’t really “actor and actress” class sprites.

Since they don’t really appear for the most part outside of Red and Masters which is kind of just there, it’s a lot easier to imagine stuff for them sometimes. But once customization pops up, for the most part I just start making my playable trainers OCs instead with some exceptions (the meme personalities). Then I have my player OCs as side characters.

The fun about it though is that it’s not really set in stone. I can kinda change it in a vacuum depending on stuff I learn and whatnot, I suppose since they are normally blank slates? So they’re like my OCs, but if I were to ever write them, this is like the interpretation of what I think about them sometimes. Minus the ones that I just go with their pokemon adventures personalities. Look, it’s a lot more entertaining dynamic wise to have a few characters that are oddball mavericks and Blue and Gold were those oddball maverick types for me. ( I never associated Blue with Leaf so that's why they'll be seperate to me.) Not all of the characterizations are completely standout for me with adventures or like, stuff I think in particular of some characters, which is why not all of them are on the page.

Some stuff might get used for like, an AU scenario. Not 100% though.


The big leak section also had some profile bits for them which I can rapid fire say the most interesting ones.

Brendan and May are both described as meddlesome and bike lovers, but in terms of divergence Brendan is clumsy because he has too many interests and May is sporty and also wears glasses when reading. She’s a tournament girl who acts quickly but she isn't a tomboy.
Lucas has in interest in playing electric bass, he likes rock, and he likes taping naps as well. Dresses casually. Dawn is into ballet, piano, and spring themes. Dresses formally.
Ethan is an athlete and interested in history, Lyra has a hairpin collection because she’s always changing her style. The thing when the Gen 2 mom saves money is called embezzlement within the files.
Ethan and Lyra, Brendan and May, and Lucas and Dawn start their journeys at 12. Red started his at 11 for RGBY. 10 years old is an anime only thing.
I kind of pick and choose sometimes I suppose what I think works best for the characterization I have in mind. Even if the leak ones turn out to be fake, they’re interesting enough to stay I guess.

Some headcanons are in no way canon adjacent and quite frankly self indulgent.

I also note that every time I update one page the other soon follows. So like if the glitch users get something, so does the protag page. They’re mirrors to each other in that way.

Red: His only interest is Pokemon and playing on his old NES. He used to play baseball but dropped it off. When he gets older he might get back into it as a hobby sort of thing. it took him a while to readjust to the way technology changed after Mt. Silver (same for both Reds.) gambling problem (snuck into game corner and bought plushies like in gen 3 hoenn.) Loves training pokemon but was overwhelmed by the burecracy of the league and that’s why he went to Mt. Silver. Came back down because he still loves pokemon despite everything else.

his dad is an average work salaryman (based on earthbound phone guy, an unused piece of dialogue in sliph. Co where his dad worked there and gave you lapras, and a dialogue in celadon mall based on a baseball game), all his adventurous traits come from his mom. Captured every Pokémon up to gen 2 (evidenced by his stadium teams). He's a polite man who gets incredibly pissed off at people who exploit or misuse their pokemon which is why he heavily trounced the shit out of rocket which is a trait that all Reds share. He is a righteous boy with a sense of justice.

Green/Rival:he would be an instagram foodie selfie type of guy but red keeps ruining his photos by eating his food and he has to take a photo fast enough to avoid red’s hand getting in the photo. has a bunch of misc hobbies like birdwatching and stamp collecting. Was childhood friends with red but then started bullying him because they were the same height and age (canon because of the gen 1 instruction manual) but I don't think he was that bad, he was a child. I feel like people conflated his reputation too much with Gary from the anime. I think after the games ended that in between period of Kanto and Johto had him fall into a depressive state because he believed he peaked as a child and then lost it immediately like it was karma or something. It's clear that he pretty much immediately quits after the Sevii islands post game quest.

He internalized a lot of things due to pressure of being Oak's grandson when it's clear that Oak favored Red more (if you lose the tutorial battle against him in FRLG oak goes "how dissapointing" plus how Oak always lets you pick the pokemon first. I noticed while playing Green if you're idling around before grabbing a starter he either looks towards the balls or away from you and Oak.) In Generations too, he yells at Agatha "don't compare me to that old man!" So there was clearly something off with their relationship. I think he was a very pressured boy who wanted to live up to his closest parental figure's expectations and had an infereiority complex. (This is borderline canon in Pokemon Zensho due to Daisy essentially telling Oak this. Also I think his parents are dead in that one.) The funny thing is he has all the tendencies to make him a woobie type where people would go "oh his story is so sad" but he was kind of a little brat who was a braggart and either intentionally or unintentionally said pressing things (I lean onto intentional). Him and Red would get into scraps.
I also like the contrast of how Green has the look of a 90s shonen protag and his Pokespe iteration might've been one of my first fictional crushes (when I was a kid) alongside Yellow. In the Gen 2 games he's taken a more introspective tone (he might've been on Cinnabar Island during the Volcano incident which is why he has that whole speech somehow.) I always wondered when he went to study abroad in Kalos, maybe it was during BW since he's in the world tournament during BW2 which is when the XY games take place.

NEW: Green (rival) : Fluctuates depending on what I think his relationship with other people in kanto are like at that given moment in time. Severity of actions dependant on how I feel like he can be as a person in terms of internal and external antagonistic behaviors.

Blue: Goes straight into "canon?" character territory because she doesn't actually properly exist until LGPE. Her appearance in the craft comic is basically the only thing to work with. I consider that maybe she could have the personality of a Lass since those girls are the closest in age to the protags visually. Idk, maybe leaf and Blue are like parallel universe versions of each other. Because if Blue is Leaf, why did she change her name, where’s her blastoise starter. Because pokemon canon is whatever.

Leaf: I do not have anything in mind for Leaf that hasn't been already uncanonized by Masters giving her a personality so it's straight into the "Canon" bin for her. I note that her fashion style is based on Kogal based on the tube socks being ruffled which is a type of Gyaru that was once seen as the fashion type of delinquents. Maybe my headcanon for her could've lived, but it got shot once Masters apparently established her as the nice girl of the trio rather than my weird punk girl headcanon. My one thing I can say that is potentially canon is after the events of the Kanto games she traveled to other reigons and wasn't as interested in going to world famous tournaments which is why she wasn't seen ever until Masters (but we all know the real reason is because GF prioritized Red.) She possibly runs a flower shop/pokemon salon when she gets older?

Protag Headcanons V2

Red (Gen 1): He’s a mother’s boy. Didn’t keep in contact because he was worried rocket would make her a target. Immensely smug about his strength and is aware about it but it’s hard for people outside of his friend group to know that he’s smug because he has mastered a poker face from years of dealing with his rival. Kind of a guy who gets weirdly unhinged and hotblooded during battles (where he gets an edgy reputation, yes, this is to contrast the "cool" Pixiv Red) but the thing is he literally might have powers to back it up (In reference to glitches) In my mind once he gets off MT. Silver he becomes a Pokemon Tracker. Always sleeping in weird places and cannot cook for the life of him despite liking a lot of food. Gets his rival to cook for him. He likes sweets and cute things but it ruins his image so he pretends not to like them. He kind of has this self worth problem where he genuinenly believes he needs to keep up a facade in order to have people tolerate him and he's desperate for someone to actually see him as is instead of constantly putting him up on a pedestal.

my psychoanalysis of Red on Mt. Silver and the effects it would have on a person to completely isolate themselves up there are that any of his problems with crowds and people and loud noises after the league only gets way worse. His pokemon are outright therapist pokemon at that point where they’re extremely attuned to his emotions. my personal canon to why Red went up there aside from “training to be stronger” because the image he has is an image that was projected by other people and the last thing anyone wants is for the living legend to be a human being and I want to see that image break instead of it constantly being reinforced by supplemental material and sure I’m fine with the stoic cool Red that is loved but at some point someone has to address that an 10-11 year old spent 3 years up there with the only actual contact outside of fanfiction visitors was a single nurse joy until a Gen 2 protag showed up and beat him. Please call your mother.
New: Instead of the actual canon reason of Mr. Silver being the grind set method as said by masters I like to think it’s the lowest point of his life where he isolated himself in genuine mixed parts where the explanation changes every time and it takes a lot of different concerned parties to help him come back down. They let people come up with their own theories.

There was also the NPC that got outright erased in the pokemon center who mentions how trainers who seek power climb Mt.Silver and an NPC on route 28 and the route 28 NPC mentions how they’re a top celebrity who just wants to be left alone because people always chase them and if that’s not supposed to be a parallel I’ll throw rocks.

What is red’s last name…? Idk, you could go with any prominent pokemon dev’s last name, like idk, (Junichi Masuda), (Shigeru Miyamoto) , (Go Ichinose) ,(Satoshi Tajiri), (Ken Sugimori), Yamaguchi, Watanabe, Ohmori, Gefuri (internal name), Isamu (based on a manga) or Akai (based on the same manga). That is such a non important question to me.

Green: He's a playstation boy to rival red (reference to placeholder names Sony and Ninten).

Without a grounding rival(in a world where Red and Blue don't exist), either two things happen immediately after the championship: He doubles down on his supposed callous behavior which then leads to Extreme burnout once his reign ends or he just keeps getting worse because he can’t be beat (not like rocket behavior, it’s internal towards himself and not his Pokémon.) Sometimes step 1 or the champion step don’t even happen because actively driving everyone away is pretty draining. He was 11 years old and had a serious inferiority complex that I blame Oak for. He would still be as successful but also bored out of his mind Usually ends up in Viridian city even if he isn’t the gym leader just to be relatively away from his grandfather or ends up isolating himself further away doing independent research or being a tracker or something that keeps him going.

I think if the alolan thing doesn't work out for Red and Green, their future profession is becoming mentors to younger trainers when they aren't doing their own thing.

Friends with Blaine because they exchange trivia and he might work under him sometimes. Having rewatched Origins the two of them (Red and Green) have such a dynamic where it's like he calls himself the genius Green and the lavender town hug scene. In Let's Go, he was supposed to be with Red during his first introduction.

(Sidenote):
There’s a certain kind of distinctiveness to this guy which doesn’t exist if you’ve only ever had the image of gen 1 in mind (a literal child) without taking into account the dialogue he had in gen 2 which was that of almost borderline mourning his friend after the adventure and subsequent fall of his short lived championship in gen 1 where red goes missing afterwards. Like he’s gotten introspective and knows that power isn’t everything for a trainer and that the world is much larger than just him and this is all dialogue wise, doesn’t even account for potential headcanon territory depending on how much you think of the relationship of him and professor Oak and Daisy and Pallet Town and Red and Red’s mom played a contributing factor. It’s way too easy to imagine him without having potential vulnerabilities especially since his self made image of supposed arrogance is both a defensive maneuver and a genuine front especially when you conflate him with someone like Gary because chances are if you do that you also haven’t watched anything past the original seasons because bro mellows out considerably even when you get to something like Orange Islands.

Green's Eevee (Why not): it is a girl, she is sassy, she doesn’t battle sometimes unless absolutely necessary, she is incredibly stubborn and somewhat spoiled. likes Pikachu. incredibly impulsive like a cat, insatiable curiosity, doors will open for her, bites people but nibbles green, screams sometimes for no reason, daisy dresses her up for contests sometimes, puffs herself up sometimes like pidgeot does to look threatening. She just looks like a ball of fluff

is it the same one from Yellow? Maybe yes, maybe no. Possibly evolved into either sylveon (after the kalos trip) or umbreon (to parallel red’s espeon) or not at all (gigantamaxes instead)

Green calls that eevee his perfect little princess and its the most pampered ass thing you’ll see in your life and he’s convinced she can do no wrong and she has him wrapped around her little paws by being cute as hell but if you combine that with all the other traits I listed above you know this thing is a beast of chaos.

Blue: having multiple contradictory headcanons in regards to leaf and blue/green does make for confusing headcanons but it’s already confusing in Pokémon canon anyways so whatever Sometimes they're the same girl with the same design, Sometimes they are not and seperate and in different age groups with leaf being related to red but red's not called red, Sometimes they're twins or ones a younger sister,Sometimes they have a sister/mentor/apprenticeship relationship. Lives on the Sevii Islands to not be a pallet town girl

I default to use the early pokespe personality sometimes where she's a trickster thief conwoman type but make the backstory of her be an ex rocket member because that's more reasonable than "she was kidnapped by a giant bird and trained to be a super soldier”. So to make it more reasonable for the games...She’s like an orphan. Or something. Maybe also her Pokespe thing where she’s silver’s “sister” so she’s Giovanni’s daughter? Idk, aside from her Pokespe personality I don’t have much for her. This is because like with leaf she literally didn't exist in canon until they brought her back in LGPE. Her only other appearance is in a papercraft book. She can be a third girl to round out the trio but simultaneously I think a lot of interesting stuff from Gen 1 comes from the fact that she isn't in their dynamic and is more of an observer/her own girl seperate from the Red Green rivalry.

I think she might become like, for a future profession,a fashion designer or scientist selling products at sliph co or maybe a battle facility head like Red and Green were.

I think a different direction that isn't as pokespe reliant is that maybe one of her parents works at Sliph Co. (but that’s also a Pokespe thing since she made tools that were originally by sliph co…)

She's a legendary hunter (a LGPE reference). She's into making Origami...? (A reference to the craft comic.)

Yeah, I really don't have anything else for her character wise.

but fashion wise I continue my line of logic for differentiating leaf and blue by contrasting the two where blue would have longer hair, leaf would have hers short, blue would wear fancy and elaborate sorts of dresses while leaf would continue down the tomgirl leaning thing, so basically, one's an high class type of gal in spite of her usual story while the other is a Y2K girl.

(This fashion contrast mostly stems from me looking on pinterest like "Blue needs more outfits that aren't her black dress or dressing her up like Leaf" so I ended up seeing a lot of dresses and coats and being like "eh, works for me." In a place like Kalos, she'd be in lumiose getting the most expensive trenchcoats and things from that one botique, you know?)

When the ReGuri alolan battle tree honeymoon/managerial thing happens she becomes the next gym leader as an explanation as to why she never showed up (but we all know it's because GF likes Red more... ) Or the new headcanon I just added.

Yellow: Yellow is here too but that’s because out of the manga characters I think Yellow would probably be the most interesting to drop off in a game centric universe because of like, the personality from earlier arcs. Yellow in the game verse exists as this like weird mysterious fae like type in the woods who will occasionally be hanging around fishing or inexplicably show up to help people if they get injured or poisoned within the woods. No one has explicitly ever actually intentionally found Yellow aside from Green who is like “well, as long as no one’s dying because of you I guess it’s fine.” Occasionally maybe she helps out at the gym as well but that's a rarity in itself.
At best, she’d probably just be a random kanto cameo like in LGPE or a stat trainer, I suppose. In terms of battling prowess, uh, Yellow’s team is canonically considered somewhat weak. I guess it’s more on the character personality to carry the single non game inclusion.

Protag Headcanons V3 (FRLG Edition)

Leaf: (The first girl I started keeping track of my headcanons for because I wanted to start using her in fics and completely barreled over the Masters interpretation): Leaf is a girl who was raised in the 2000s and therefore has all of that cultural background applied to her— which is doubly noncanon because I’m applying a western experience to her. To me, this is a girl who was into dress up flash games and warrior cats who would have an Eevee sparkling rainbow blasting OC and say “rawr.” She was very happy when Sylveon existed. Her bike would be a skateboard and she would secretly be punk despite clearly being dressed like a prep girl. She starts hanging around Misty and Erika more often because she tried dating the rival once and it didn’t work out.

I like to have my pokemon trainer characters be reflective of the time period their games came out sometimes so while Red has a Geocities page that died, Leaf would have the vibes of an NPC in THUG 2 and play guitar hero. Gen 1 Red isnt openly hostile to her like he is with Fire and they could have this awkward mentor thing but Leaf doesn’t want to deal with someone who dislikes her brother so it’s weird.

Other thoughts I have: she has a Pikachu that enjoys being in her ball. Weird! she's the kind of girl to carry around a stuffed animal and wear PJs to class, like those cookie monster types. she can talk but whenever she dislikes a person she just stops

Going off my blue and leaf fashion divergence idea: leaf would be dressed in a way that still fits pokemon , so maybe something out of sonic riders like amy or cream's outfit with the visor hat but using the roller skates instead of an air gear but that's definitely because I remember seeing a run of digital dimension once and being like "that's cool. " at some point, idk when, the video is 11 years old now. A lot of things in my mind tend to roll back to Sonic I guess.

What about her team? Would it be cheating to just say it looks like my pokemon team from my 2022 leafgreen run? With the unevolved Eevee and Venusaur and Aerodactyl and Gyarados and Hitmonlee and Lapras? I named them all after food. I feel like most protag teams kinda just go with whatever gift mons are given in game, then a starter. Like, dawn's team is pretty much the team every diamond run goes with... I never thought about this much.

What about Leaf last names. In Japan she had a fan nickname based on combining the two pieces of FRLG’s names spelling wise which meant Red was called Red Lee and the leftovers made Fugiri which means balls. Please don’t use that as her last name. I guess you’d have to go with any female devs? It’s kinda really something going onto the bulbapedia wiki and seeing Toby fox be a game dev because I mean, he sure is for pokemon now. Atsuko Nishida is the pikachu designer, Megumi Mizatani designed Mimikyu, Saya Tsuruta created all the previews for HGSS locations, and uh… idk. I feel like those names would not be instantly recognized as much as the other devs. I mean the only reason I even said Leaf has a pikachu is because of a battle revolution trailer where she had one alongside Red with Deoxys.
NEW:
Leaf: What if there was a weird girl like who came from an era that no longer exists in the modern day, unabashedly silly . (As much as I'd like to use a Leaf image here, Leaf didn't pop up once in GOTCHA.)

Fire: The Gen 3 design of Red who I consider seperate from Gen 1 Red for this "canon" list. Him and Red are either best friends or each other's greatest haters. I project some personality traits of my own onto this one way much more than I do with Gen 1 red.

He's kind of lethargic sometimes and falls asleep in weird spots. Possibly has psychic powers.The kind of guy who likes wearing the same shirt over and over until it gets worn out. Has a laundry chair. Doesn’t like loud noises or crowds or parties. Has a tendency to start new things and then drop them unless he’s super interested in them. Doesn’t get social cues that well so Leaf has to fill him in sometimes. Needs to have things repeated sometimes because he was inattentive. Has a bad case of RBF and can’t hold eye contact well. since he caught hoenn mon to finish the national dex for FRLG he’s been in hoenn at one point (I took this from canon and also emerald Kaizo rom hack appearances where he’s a menace, dude literally appears offscreen to fight you and he's under a victory road bridge.)


Gambling problem (plays Gacha games). Can speak but either chooses not to/selective mute (confirmed canon by masters). Atrocious sense of fashion and tends to mostly wear T-shirts until they wear out because those are acceptable. Absolutely terrible with crowds and people and was overwhelmed by the fame of being champion without a support group and felt heavy guilt for taking away other people's dreams. Interested in Aliens (Referencing Deoxys Event) ambiguously weird relationship between gen 1 red and gen 3 red. Same guy? Reincarnation? Parallel worlds? His Pikachu's a girl.

He helps leaf out with the flower shop. He picked squirtle as his starter.

I think in the pokemon world as long as you're good at battling people tend to look past a lot of weird social things and I pretty much make Leaf the defacto champion which makes Fire have this awkward position of "well, I became champion after the other two, so I'm not really sure what I'm doing here" whenever he gets invited to do official league things and actually comes (bro has the status of a mythical pokemon as in he vanishes for long periods of time where no one knows where he is outside of sending postcards from regions he's visited like that one headcanon I had for Leaf in the Canon section.) Obviously none of this is canon to actual Pokemon, I just like having a bit of contrast based on my own experience and it's more of a fun writing exercise.

They've (Fire, Leaf, Terry) got the high school dynamic of cookie monster PJ girl that carries plushies, goth guy, and whatever the third caption was, I don't recall the meme.

OG red is born on feb 27 to be a reference to gen 1's original release date
fire and leaf are born on jan 29 as a reference to frlg's jp release date. The only in game evidence of FRLG Red ever being called Fire comes from internal data of Pokemon Ranger. Otherwise, he’s red.
NEW:
Red: literally just a mutation of collected red headcanons that were either made up or from other people’s red fanons that have branched into “whatever fits whatever I’m thinking about at this moment in time.”
The current concept is post Mt. Silver, regional traveler, Mt Silver is the EVO moment of Pokémon where his reputation depends on who’s in the circle so he's not 100% famous like how the games depict it or 100% mysterious and he's just some guy. Like my description of Red at the moment is literally just Ryu from street fighter where he's wandering looking for a good battle.

Leaf and Fire: A lot of these headcanons in regards to these two came about from muddy childhood memories of assuming the players of FRLG were related due to: starting within the same house, both having brown hair(They literally have the same hairtuft thing too) , and my previous game being Emerald where Brendan and May both lived in separate houses and being very confused when I did not see the other player character ever in the overworld. In my mind, these two are siblings and all the character dynamics that come of weird 2000s girl and her normie brother, minus the fact he doesn't talk. In my mind, these two are of an equal level of strength in battling and have each others backs.

In my head I also use the internal name for the FRLG rival in order to have this kind of "successor" trio for the kanto games, which is just a trend of me writing out remake stories as if they're sequels instead of retellings.

Terry: Probably the guy who is so far removed from his actual canon considering that he only exists because of an alternate name for Gen 3. Whereas Leaf is Prep and Fire is... Jock, he's lowkey a goth. He becomes a researcher like Gary does or like how Spaceworld had him as a researcher like Oak. Terry doesn’t have the same burnout issue where it’s primarily because of family expectations (being the grandson of Oak is treated differently in various canons where it’s like they either get along or it’s hinted they don’t at all.) He wears glasses, might be into ghost hunting because Leaf drags him into it, clearly this is just me taking a dude and doing whatever to the point he should really be an OC. Terry can see ghosts (Fire can too) but he doesn't think they're real. One time he did see a ghost though when he was in pokemon tower and this would’ve been a real big problem for him but he got really tired so the ghost left. (Yes this is a reference to GU! Leaf.)

Gold: If you ever look at that image of Gold standing with a smirk for Gen 2 then you will understand my vision when I say that I basically just go "Yeah Gold's a smug fella, he thinks he's the shit, and he is!" Going further into this I just go “yeah I pretty much adopted Gold’s personality traits from pokespe” where he skateboards (which is a Spaceworld thing) and does gambling where he cheats with the balls and is in general kind of a menace (which is a trait I made up.) Despite his outright ludicrous personality traits he’s somehow good with raising pokemon eggs but human children instinctively hate him.

In spite of this, gold's arrogance is a front and he outright can’t stand having eye contact sometimes, hates being compared to Red, and he’ll always be a country boy at heart despite having city boy tendencies. crystal's arrogance is genuine until she gets flattened by red and the duo do this back and forth of the two of them fighting to beat red until Lyra shows up out of nowhere to beat both of them at beating red.(So I guess an easier thing to say would be "I based his personality off of adventures more than I did golden boys or the chronicles OVA.") The thin veneer of self loathing held together by overconfidence as opposed to someone who does not have that problem whatsoever while meanwhile Lyra is just chilling Turning my wild AU headcanon spinoffs into their own characters rather than radically change the actual personalities but then again, there's not much even with something like masters...

Crys: If you ever look at that image of Crystal standing with a smirk for Gen 2 then you will understand my vision when I say that I basically just go "Yeah Crystal's a smug fella, she thinks she's the shit, and she is!"

Protag Headcanons 2

Gold: Ken from Spaceworld still exists so he has an older brother.

I think Gold might get into a temp gig at the radio station, he feels like the kind of guy who would start an indie band that gets like 10 followers and he feels proud of that, (his music genre of choice is definitely city pop.) his pokemon play the backup instruments.

Silver: My first experience with Gen 2 content was Pokespe and as much as I don't want to just be like "uhhh bluuh Silver's the same" Silver is my Favorite Pokespe character aside from Yellow but I can't always have what I want.
So here's what I do have!
Silver is taller than Ethan (this is mostly based on some fanart I saw where he was taller than Ethan and had way longer hair.) Gen 2 Silver however is shorter than Gold to the point that most of the stuff he does wear/steal is oversized on him (possibly also just foraging in the forest, whenever Gold or Kris treated him to food he’d steal the stuff off of their plates too.)

I have thoughts on this like johto sequel series where Silver becomes the gym leader of Viridian and he uses mostly dark types and also hangs out with Lyra and Kris. He kind of wishes they’d let him use Crobat as his ace but Lance said no in spite of the dragon’s den mentor thing. “You have to follow protocol like everyone else, people got pissed off after Green refused to get a gym leader type.”

Crys/Kris:Kris is potentially Mr. Pokémon’s granddaughter since they both have blue hair.
if kris was modernized she would wear a beanie like dawn because beanies are cool
I think Crystal was seen as an odd one out for not being as "girly" as other girl trainers despite there being many gym leaders that were also women and her outright needing to change clothes to look like Gold for going into things like the cable club. A lot of my johto headcanon comes from them being almost in this "underdog" position in the shadow of the living legend and that's why it's so important that they be the ones to defeat him rather than it being Green. In fact, I think Green probably lost every time he tried (notably after finding Red after the johto kids did)

Lyra: Kris and Lyra are best friends without any bad blood between the two of them and they help each other out at the daycare (in spite of the fact that it’s Ethan’s grandparents.) Lyra is the protag for the HGSS story and has the spiky eared Pichu on her team.

Ethan: Ethan is far nicer in comparison to Gold and he’s the kind of guy who’s naturally good with kids and helps out people with random things and will drop whatever he’s doing because he’s a people pleaser but he takes a serious face when he goes into battling. Gold would scam him for money with zero hesitation. He’d get really into pokeathalon as a sort of professional thing. Ethan is a physical touch type of guy (based on some info I glanced on about trivia from a quiz book)

Brendan and May: I've realized that there's less room for me to do my headcanon nonsense with Brendan and May because they already have an established backstory in the games being either the child of a gym leader or the child of the pokemon professor so no matter what I’d need to bring that up since I’m pendatic. Or if I go with the optional route stuff, uhhh, well, Pokemon Special already made Ruby a contest goer and Sapphire a wild girl. Pokemon anime made May the big coordinator. There’s not really anything I could do that hasn’t been done already for them that could remain in the constraints of canon. I think they both have secret bases full of plushies but Brendan refuses to admit he has any (which is based on a piece of dialogue in Lilycove city.)

Sidenote rambling:

if i start talking about music tastes then it's too late for me because I'll bring up my own music taste from the 2000s period and I think saying that any pokemon character would listen to nickelback or three days grace or green day or linkin park or MCR or Sum 41 or Weezer or Fall out boy or Paramore might kill someone by secondhand cringe.

like who looks at a pokemon character and goes "...Ah!" he would listen to 90s jungle drum and bass like the peshay studio sets and enjoy the foo fighters.

Probably nothing like new Jack swing either. (See, my problem is that I have such varied music taste that has clipped below anything that radio stations normally play that makes these kinda prompts difficult to answer.)

...but if there's any pokemon character who'd unironically listen to like idol girl bands it would have to be the character you least expect it to so naturally its brendan again because of the lilycove mall thing.

for a future profession, brendan becomes a professor and a top coordinator, and May becomes top champion/gym leader with her theme being a news reporter.

Dawn: I just adopt Dawn's personality from the anime. That's about it. Nothing to say on the PLA protags/equivalents because I've never played PLA. I have nothing to say on Lucas because for the most part I default to Dawn as the protagonist so he's just the lab assistant guy to me.

Dawn and Lucas: Dawn is pretty much the defacto "chosen one" of Arceus and ends up back in the future with a sidenote of amnesia from the events of PLA (she was sent there after becoming champion). It's difficult for her to adjust back for a while, during her time reconciling she becomes friends with Fire who was visiting Sinnoh. During the time she went missing, Lucas ended up becoming the chosen one for Giratina in a desperate attempt to try finding her.

In spite of my whole thing on treating various lookalikes as different sometimes (Leaf, Ethan, Red) , I make Akari and Dawn the same person for some reason because I think having one protag that’s the definitive one on the level of legend that Red has in game canon is interesting. I don’t want everyone to be like that because of most Pokémon games happening to center on big legends and big team plots and what not, so I only picked one protag to be the counterpart . I think it makes sense for it to be the character from the region where they really emphasized legendary lore twice in different games. Man made legend versus pokemon picked legend.

Black and White: I AM NOT CALLING THEM HILDA AND HILBERT anyways it's clear to me that GF wanted these two to be the Gen 5 equivalent of Red with how they went missing plus the cut PWT encounter with them both being in the internal data with dialogue and red being a last minute addition. I think they journeyed for a long time and never knew that N returned to Unova like some kind of tragic irony. White (girl) is a total battle maniac while Black (boy) is more of a reading strategy type.

Anyways here's Proof about the PWT thing, it's also when Red started being called the living legend. I wish the PWT Hilda and Hilbert in game cameo battles were real with memory link, why does Red get to be the only returning player character, I want to know what other player characters are up to on their own adventures too… Masters isn’t enough, I need cameos.

Black and White: I have a few AUs about them failing at the last minute and a bad future of Unova where they're forced to be puppets to Ghestis after failing to win against N(they get better though.) for a future profession, white becomes top battler and possibly a battle facility head (maybe in black city) and black becomes a historian researching ruins

The way I forgot to write out anything for Serena and Calem... Once customization gets added in I just start making more OCs on average. I don’t really have much in mind for those two because I feel like they got pretty defined personalities based on the rival variant and Serena’s anime depiction is probably the one that has most supplanted a pokemon character aside from the other girl’s that were used as the main girl.

Elio, Selene: Immediate meme dumping of perpetual weird smiling twins menace the region. Selene is nice but Elio has a somewhat mean streak of malicious purpose. I wouldn't headcanon so many of these trainers as siblings if they ever had different haircolors and styles or like, appeared in the games, but when they're blank slates they are BLANK.

Gloria, Victor: Meme personality of the incredibly angry loud girl who hates being in the world of pokemon, and some guy who would fall for a cartoon mouse cheese box trick and go “egads!” .