@Lady This is seriously such a weird facet of Pokemon games, like, this feels like the last series to have a weird complicated timeline and games that functionally never happened but

@coriander i don't know if you're aware of this already or not but in let's go! pikachu and let's go! eevee they retconned red and blue into NPCs that the player character interacts with, which means basically all of the original three generations mostly couldn't have happened (since team rocket obviously still exists in let's go!; cinnabar island is still there; mewtwo was never captured; etc etc etc)

@Lady I was NOT aware, that's

Damn that's wild

@coriander most people resolve this by just saying let's go isn't real but let's go includes a character from sun and moon and actually has a pretty clear place in the timeline and it does make sense if you just accept that retcon and be like "okay, Red didn't stop Team Rocket and Gold and Silver haven't happened yet"

@Lady Weren't the ORAS games also like explained in-game as being an AU or something?

@coriander yes although that's also fucky

so the original Ruby and Sapphire are set at the same time as Red and Blue, and in Emerald there is this rando girl in the Battle Frontier or whatever

in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire they were kind of cheekily like “this is an AU which explores what the games would be like if Mega Evolution was a thing!!” and they used that to give Groudon and Kyogre these cool primal forms

so that's all cool but then in Sun and Moon they decided to wormhole in rando Battle Frontier girl from THE ORIGINAL EMERALD into the story, and they decided to do this AT LEAST A DECADE before the start of the game's events, meaning that not only are ORAS and the original RSE not in the same universe, but RSE (set in 1996) probably happened way earlier that ORAS (which is probably not a decade before Sun and Moon)

but!!! this new placement of ORAS then allows it to line up with Let's Go, which is ALSO set significantly after the original games it's based off of (due to the inclusion of Red, Blue, and Green as NPCs who completed their journeys years ago) despite none of its plot points being resolved at the start of the game either!!

@coriander buttt it's extremely open to interpretation whether Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet take place in that timeline, in the original one, or in… a timeline of their own? there are plenty of references to sun & moon in sword & shield but is it the sun & moon of the universe with mega evolution?? is there an AU sun & moon with no mega evolution?? who knows

@coriander what i'm saying is that EITHER Gen I–III didn't happen OR Gen VI–VII didn't happen but we don't know which one

@coriander i think this question will probably be resolved in 2024 when they inevitably release some manner of remake but we'll just have to wait and see

if it's an unova remake then maybe we won't know until Gen X

(i hope it's not an unova remake because i honestly don't know how they could pull that off [short of just doubling the length of the generation]; the unova games are Complicated and basically require a whole generation just to themselves)

@Lady God, I had no idea it was THIS complex

Incredible

@coriander however all of these retcons happened in The Alternate Universe Where Mega Evolution Exists™ and now that they've removed Mega Evolution from the games i think we're still kind of waiting for word as to whether that plot thread is going to like… stick around?? or be dropped??