#i also think gary makes a lot of comments about goh’s stupid hair that are complimentary in a demeaning way

[kohakhearts]

deeply curious abt mentally ill timeskip goh and his ditto. but for some reason mostly his hair??? did he grow it out on purpose? does he take care of it? just brush and go or does he use products? not important or something he takes pride in?? idk why

hi anon thank you SO much for asking!!

(ok so disclaimer the premise of this timeskip is like what i think would be a natural future scenario for the characters. most of my fics are AUs so essentially unrelated, but in terms of designs and stuff this is kind of what i’m playing with in those fics too. the short answer to the hair thing is i just think it’s neat. but dw there’s also a long answer :p)

“mentally ill timeskip goh” is perfect btw. that’s him in a nutshell. if he’s not mentally ill what’s the fucking point /j

i think that goh is someone who, in canon, uses his ambitions as a distraction from things that actually upset him - i mean, we see him as a kid from his parents’ perspective so invested in research that he barely acknowledges when they say they won’t be home for the holidays because they have to work, but his own memory of the same scene is coloured with a little more emotion lol. so we get the impression that he tries hard for his parents’ sakes to be unbothered by their lifestyle. i wrote about how goh is a quintessential parentified child here and doing that to your kid is basically just asking for them to grow up to become a neurotic workaholic which is why He’s Like That. but in canon meeting ash opens him up to other opportunities - where he is valued and appreciated by someone who, like him, is so driven by his goals he’s willing to. you know. jump on the back of a a giant god-bird mid-flight.

but then he and ash go separate ways. and even though goh comes out of their shared time together every day a little more friendly and open, he’s still himself, right??? so while ash is off journeying, i think goh would eventually take more of a gary path where he does stay in one place for an extended amount of time in order to further his education (as an aside, at this time gary is between kalos and hoenn studying primal reversion). he tries the ash thing first, but it’s not the same on his own. using his goal of catching every pokemon as a distraction from the fact that he gets lonely without ash only works so well. but he’d rather eat his own arm than admit that to anyone, let alone ash (who keeps in touch…to an extent), so he eventually pivots and seeks out other opportunities. one of those opportunities results in a cerulean cave expedition where he meets his ditto, whose goal is stirring as much shit as it possibly can and as a result it’s very talented at transformations. i don’t have the whole story there figured out yet, but for one reason or another ditto decides to go with goh (who is very impressed by its ability, and sees that it could be a huge asset to his research).

goh’s field of research is pokemon genealogy - quite literally working his way up to mew! (as a result, he winds up consulting frequently with gary, who is a pokemon palaeontologist. so they’re not actively coworkers but they still work together. here are your crumbs shigegou nation.) ditto is the perfect research assistant because its transformations are a cellular reconstruction. so yes it can transform into any other pokemon but it can also in theory transform into any other pokemon moved-slightly-to-the-left. meaning that it can replicate less evolved (in the real-world definition of evolution, not the pokemon definition) versions of pokemon based on models and simulations.

but going back to the being lonely thing, that’s why he got the early 20s depression beam LOL (imo there are other things wrong with him but thats a whole other essay). his hair getting long initially is just a result of never getting it cut (first because he’s travelling and doesn’t have time for that, then because he’s “too busy” in general) but i think he’d come to like it because it’s easier to manage in the sense that he can just pull it back and ignore it lmao. also it’s a little Gender and i think he would grow to appreciate that quality. so it’s not something he takes pride in necessarily but i don’t think he’d have any kind of dramatic “i’m not too depressed to cut my hair anymore” moment or anything. he doesn’t have the patience to style it himself but i think he’d be willing to let chloe tackle it now and then!