Trainer Lore

In 2025 I began crafting lore around "myself" in the Pokémon world. There was a video I watched - though I don't remember exactly what video or by who - from a Youtuber who talked about how they thought that one of the most appealing things about the Pokémon franchise wasn't just the creatures or the game, but that it's an entire world. It's similar in the ways that's familiar to us as humans, but also incredibly different in ways that leave a lot of room for flexibility, categorization, imagination, and passionate self-indulgence.

This isn't what the Youtuber said, but they definitely mentioned the strength of imagination when it comes to being a Pokémon fan. That as a child, liking Pokémon is as easy as thinking to yourself, what kind of person would I be in the Pokémon world? What kind of Pokémon would I like? What kind of lifestyle in this reminiscent-but-not-real world could I possibly have? What decisions would I make, what kind of trainer would I be?

In essence, so much about being a Pokémon fan is about one's imagination. Of course, there are other elements: battling, playing games in specific ways, playing romhacks, coming up with fakemon, catching them all, playing every mainline game as it comes out. But imagination is still an enveloping element for all of this - both in our reality, and what it means to care about Pokémon as an idea, a systematic game, a world. It's like being given a box of toys and playing with them however you want. Loving Pokémon is a creative endeavor, an imaginative game in itself.

And so upon hearing these words, I thought to myself, you know what? You're right. Imagining who you are in the Pokémon world is incredibly fun. There's no "purpose" to it because it's for yourself - but at the same time, that purpose is to be for yourself.

And so I started imagining.

I won't go into detail about all the lore I came up with for "myself" in the Pokémon world, mostly because a lot of it is personal and takes from my life and more private things about me. As one may guess, my lore is centered around "me" as the main character, and in my imagination I've come up with new social/cultural rules to fit with my relationship with Pokémon (and other certain Pokémon) as I've evolved over the years.

For the most part, a lot of how I've constructed the story of my lore draws direct parallels from my life and what I was going through at certain times, while also occasionally adjoining with the years of certain game releases and when I played them. In tandem with this, I incorporated people from my life and assigned Pokémon to them based on what I think fits, or if I already associate them with a Pokémon. Like the personal element, I won't get into detail about that here. But I will say that I think it's interesting that I assigned the majority of my family to be water type Pokémon.

This page is a simplistic public reimagining of both my lore and my relationship with Pokémon, as exemplified on this website. I just wanted to make a page of my favorite guys organized in a certain way so that looking at them makes me happy. The structure of this page represents that, as well as being reflective of the lore I've developed. Also, this website exists within the lore - it's functionally the same.