reneesfoxden:

stantler:

professor sycamore when his hypothesis on the 18th type was confirmed after his findings were repeatedly rejected and laughed at by the heads of the kalos institute of pokebiology for over a decade

stantler:

that post about gym leaders tweeting that rock and ground are the same type is funny but do you think this has ever been like a point of contention for biologists in the pokemon world. like the way the fairy type wasn’t discovered until recent years and was misclassified as normal type for most of history. do you think professors in the pokemon universe argue over whether certain pokemon have been mistyped or if certain types may actually not exist at all

Not to get all ‘Well actually’ over Pokemon, but I have to state some things.  It would be incredibly easy to prove or disprove the existence of fairy types.  Simply use a fighting type move on a Clefairy.  If it deals massive damage, then it’s a normal type, if it deals very little damage then it isn’t.  You could also use a dragon type move.

This actually brings up an interesting conundrum.  The Clefairy in Gen I-V take massive damage from fighting-type moves, but very little damage in Gen VI-VIII.  This is an objective fact, which means only one thing.  There is something inherently different from a Clefairy in Gen III vs a Clefairy in Gen VI.  This difference can’t be based on the region it lives in, because Hoenn Clefairy in gen III and Hoenn Clefairy in Gen VI take a different amount of damage from fighting type moves.  This also means that it can’t be a time based thing where Clefairy suddenly changed from one type to another.  

The good news is that there actually is a canon explanation for this.  In ORAS’s Delta Episode you meet a person named Zinnia who explains that Pokemon exists within a multiverse

She describes a version of Hoenn without Mega Evolution, assumably this refers to the Gen III Hoenn.  Therefore we can easily assume that there are multiple universes, one where fairy types do not exist at all and one where fairy types have always existed and been known about.  

We can take this even further, Delta Episode contains a device that allows you to travel to another universe.  Guess what it’s called?

A Link Cable

AKA, this thing:

This implies that not only does Gen III and Gen VI take place in alternate universes, but that every playthrough of Pokemon takes place in an alternate universe.