Lastly, a few questions that came to mind that could be interesting launching points for discussion:
- The world of Pokemon is absolutely littered with random items. Even areas that are relatively far off the beaten path (like the Seafoam Islands and Unknown Dungeon) have items. In fact, the less-trafficked locations oftentimes have a higher density of items than high-traffic areas. Why is this? One idea: when a trainer walks into a dungeon like the Cerulean Cave or Seafoam Islands, the Pokemon there are savage, having had little exposure to humans. When/if all of his Pokemon faint, the feral Pokemon kill and feast upon the defenseless trainer. Eventually, their remains decay, leaving only a collection of items behind. These items become strewn about, somehow.
I think it would be more realistic to say that the Pokemon consider Trainer's items to be prizes, and certain items perhaps have uses (I could definitely see, say, a Seel balancing a pokeball on it's nose). The reason they're so spread out is because that different mons will sleep in different places.
- After a Pokeball has been used to attempt a capture, it can never be used again, regardless of whether the attempt was successful or not. If the attempt was successful, the Pokeball becomes permanently "assigned" to that Pokemon. If the attempt was unsuccessful, the Pokeball becomes useless junk. What's the science behind that?
When a Pokemon busts out of the ball, I imagine it breaks the pokeball. Perhaps the hinges on the back lock in place when the ball is capturing, and if a Pokemon comes free they break and become unusable?
Also, this is the best economic choice as well. Silph Co. produces Pokeballs, but if you could just pick up and use the same 6 Poke balls for your amazingly superawesome team, they'd be pratically out of a business.
- Humans seem to be the only animal in the Pokemon universe that cannot be captured by Pokeballs. Why is this? One explanation is that it's not impossible to catch humans in a Pokeball; it's just very improbable (something absurdly low like a 1 in 10^100 chance). The more highly evolved a species is, the more difficult it is to capture. This, primitive species like Caterpie and Pidgey are easy to catch, while the likes of Zapdos and Mewtwo are harder to catch, with humans being the most highly evolved species (and this nearly impossible to catch.)
I think it's either one of two things that keeps humans from capture; either the pokeballs were built that way (which makes sense; if I had the choice, I would make cages for bears that couldn't catch humans), or humans have some ability to break out of pokeballs that makes catching a human useless. I think the smartest non-legendary Pokemon ever found in the wild is Abra, or perhaps Drowsee; maybe humans are the only species smart enough to immediately break free?
- Why are trainers limited to carrying six Pokemon at a time? I originally theorized that this was a practical limitation due to the weight, but I'm more inclined to adopt FlareBlitz's wormhole idea. The question remains: what is it that prevents unscrupulous trainers (like most of Team Rocket) from carrying a huge number of Pokemon?
You'll need to make something up to cover this one, since there is basically no canon reason (from ingame at least) that explains this. Perhaps there might not even be a limit, except that most trainers just don't catch more than six (again, the AU fact of this needs to be put in place to explain it).
Although, since this is sort of about fanfiction, I don't feel so bad about recommending
Pokemon 0, as it also deconstructs many of Pokemon's ideals. The reason I'm bringing it up is because in this story they have a Zero Ball, that lets the user catch over 30 grouped up Pokemon at a time.
- Lastly, one fact to throw on the table (I don't think it needs to be phrased as a question to inspire discussion): in the Pewter museum, there is an NPC who says "July 20, 1969! The 1st lunar landing! I bought a color TV to watch it!"
The thing about this is that the first generation of Pokemon was closer to the real world than any of the others. The Pokedex descriptions included real continent or country names, and I believe Gastly's even mentioned that it could topple an Indian elephant. I think that, at least in this situation, it would be better to bring this further away from the real world, because Pokemon is just so out there.
I had actually been thinking about writing a story like this, albeit to a much smaller scale. It would follow Red's travels through Kanto, and it would be in 3rd person to accentuate the fact that he is a coldhearted automaton of a person. However, I hadn't been planning on deconstructing anything else, so this is still bigger than my idea.
To reply to an earlier post, I can see Silver taking all the money from trainers he beats, and that would be how he pays for Pokemon Center visits. The idea that Pokemon slowly heal inside their pokeballs is an interesting one, because it would mean that the pokeball is more than just a containment unit. How do you heal damage to a being that is completely made of energy?