#splitdecisionshipping

#13: “how can anybody not be afraid of love?” wc: 1 924 read on ao3 here

It was supposed to be a simple research trip to Paldea. Three days, tops, to touch base with some of the consulting researchers on the Paradox Project, which was, of course, closely tied with both Gary’s and Goh’s own research on Primal Reversion and Pokémon phylogeny, respectively.

It’s not the first time they’ve travelled together for something like this, and it usually goes the same way every time: Goh avoiding any overtures Gary might make, like an invite to dinner or a coffee in the morning or the opportunity to slip away from work and do something more fun, just the two of them. If Gary ropes someone else into it, he’ll agree, but otherwise, Gary has been developing a theory about him for some time—and is getting more and more confident that the issue isn’t that Goh is asocial. It’s that he doesn’t want Gary to think he wants to spend any more time alone with him than their jobs force them to.

It’s on that third day, though, that they meet the Tandemaus just outside Mesagoza. It would not have been so striking, if not for the fact that it is cut in half: one lonely mouse, looking distraught without its partner.

CRACKS KNUCKLES. MY TIME HAS COME

shigegou: ship it!

(side note: i still think i've gotta get serious about using splitdecisionshipping for them until it sticks, lmao)

what made you ship it?

actually this is one of those cases of i shipped them by proxy for ot3 purposes. i liked their dynamic but when i watched jn initially i hadn't yet done my os rewatch and i was actually pretty normal about gary oak (as a kid he wasn't really a big fave or anything and i hadn't actively watched anything but the pokemon movies since middle school so). they definitely gave that same vibe as os pallet though like the "i have a crush on you i can't deal with" so i think i liked that dynamic :p

what are your favourite things about the ship?

ok so now fast forward to the great anipoke rewatch/watch (since i'd never seen the later gens before) of 2023. i got really unwell about gary. DJFGHJFKDDFHJDK but i'd been unwell about goh from when i watched jn the year before so it was...not difficult to begin drawing parallels. i think a lot of people point out how similar the shigegou dynamic is to the early shigesato dynamic and like. that's true and valid! but as individual characters, gary and goh have so much in common. gary's whole schtick is that he travels alone. he doesn't wait around for ash to catch up to him, necessarily. he has his own ideas of what he should be doing and how he should be doing it and mr "i've already got ten badges" here sure as hell isn't a slacker when it comes to proving how Awesome and Capable he is. we never, not once, see gary working as a team with anyone until pokemon chronicles (power play is something else to me. to be clear). by his own admission in jn, he wasn't much of a team player and that's a big part of why he pushed goh so hard about teamwork and collaboration (ok. he doesn't say this so much as goh kinda figures it out and gary doesn't actively deny it. but we the viewers who have known gary oak since 1997 know enough to say yeah he kinda sucked and put people down for his own sake, this tracks). they're both very goal-oriented but in a different way than ash is. i think where ash sees other people are like, a source of insight and inspiration, gary and goh both tend to see them as obstacles (ironically, ash is the first person they each didn't see this way)

also, they both have an interest in like. catching and researching pokemon. gary obviously likes battling too, but in i think showdown at the poke-corral, oak says that gary has caught over 200 pokemon. but he also cares deeply about them all (in jp he often calls his mons some variation of "partner," "honey," "sweetie" and we see him rotate his pokemon a lot - he doesn't have just one team, he switches them out a lot!). goh has a bit of a different approach, yes, but fundamentally i think the interest comes from the same place. and there is no doubt that they both care about their pokemon.

so like. i think those qualities are probably things gary sees, but even more than that, i think he sees a lot of his own worst qualities in goh: arrogant, self-absorbed, putting himself in a position where he is so afraid of people letting him down (though in gary's case, i think this is actually more being of afraid of letting other people down than the reverse) that he doesn't even try to do things that would make him happy or necessarily improve his capabilities as a trainer/research/person in general. but more to the afraid of letting people down point...i think it seems likely that initially gary sees goh as overcompensating for a fear of failure, like he does. but that's not exacty the case with goh, and through more work together it would become a lot more apparent that his issue is actually that he doesn't trust anyone but himself (and ash, by the time they meet - but even then, there are a lot of moments that suggest that trust is tenuous at the best of times). and i think gary would see that as a challenge, too. so idk i'm rambling here but there are just a lot of directions i think you could take with them that are super interesting. gary's position as being, like, an aleady fully-developed character who had to have his big moments of upset, etc. by the time he meets goh make it interesting. lots of opportunity to delve into their parallels and approach them as two people who actually fundamentally make each other better - goh by encouraging gary's own self-awareness and empathy, and gary by pointing out all the flaws in goh's logic because he used to think the same way.

is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

it's like me and 4 other people brain rotting (actually went into the tag the other day out of curiosity and discovered that even though they have over 50 fics on ao3, only 4 aren't a polyamorous or side ship kind of deal so. Yeah) so i don't think there are even any unpopular opinions to be had except maybe that it's a good dynamic and they deserve more love </3

Goh is determined to prove his worth as a researcher once and for all.

As usual, things don't quite go his way.

fandom: pokemon (anime) rating: t relationship(s): goh/gary chapters: 2/16 word count: 8 278 written for: @whumptober (prompt: troubled past resurfacing) read it here

“Here late again, I see.”

Goh glances up only briefly enough to match Horace’s voice to his face. When his eyes fall back to the papers scattered around his desk, he asks, “Don’t you have something better to be doing than judging me?”

“I’m not judging you. Just making an observation. You’ve been here later than the rest of us every day this week…”

“Observation… Judgement… What difference is there, really?” He narrows his eyes at a particular line of writing. It must have been late when he wrote it, because it’s nearly illegible, even by his own standards. “I think you’d be better off observing something a little more meaningful, but suit yourself.”

“You’re part of our team. Isn’t that meaningful enough?”

He deftly picks up the piece of paper and drops it in the bin under his desk. Just another bit of sleep-deprived nonsense.

“You know what I meant,” he says. “Go home, Horace. I’m not interested.”

“The professor thinks you’re working too hard.”

Goh grits his teeth. “Since when is that a bad thing?”

“When you don’t know your limits,” Horace says quietly. “Anyway…I guess you’re right. It’s not my business. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Sure, whatever.”

He doesn’t turn around to see the hurt expression he’s sure Horace is sporting. They used to be friends, a long time ago. But Horace is the one who made it all fall apart, not Goh; and even if he swears it was a mistake, or that he’s changed, Goh knows better.

People make false promises all the time. He can save himself the effort of hoping this one will be different by never giving himself a chance to hope in the first place.

Besides, Horace can’t possibly understand why Goh needs to work so hard at this. Their research team revolves around Mythical Pokémon, particularly Mew, but they’ve recently hit some walls in recent attempts at tracking it down. So, Goh has elected to take a different route—one many of their colleagues have scoffed at, have written off as impossible. Even more so for the likes of Goh.

Well…not colleagues, so much as colleague. Gary Oak is the apple of Professor Amaranth’s eye, and he doesn’t waste any time, ever, in making sure Goh remembers it. When Goh first brought up the idea, Amaranth had been interested, but Gary’s vehement disagreement regarding its place in their research quickly swayed him to doubt.

“It seems too dangerous,” is what he said. “Perhaps we ought to explore other avenues first.”

But Goh knows placating when he hears it, and the words beneath that sentiment were all too clear to him even then: You don’t have the talent to solve this mystery yourself.

While on an expedition in the Crown Tundra, Gary runs into Goh: injured, directionless, and hell-bent on getting rid of him.

fandom: pokemon (anime) rating: t relationship(s): gary/goh word count: 5.6k written for: @whumpuary (prompts: "get away from me" and "collapse") read it here

The Crown Tundra is a harsh place.

Gary does not come here often, so much as he can avoid it; though rare and powerful Pokémon call this place home, he is perfectly content to leave them as they are and find other Pokémon that fit the same bill in warmer, less rugged climes. This is, however, a once in a lifetime opportunity; he would be remiss to wave off the chance to study such magnificent Pokémon simply because he knows they’ll be a hassle to hunt down.

The Legendary birds that congregate at the Dyna Tree every few decades are thought by many to be little more than folklore spun from the locals’ inability to identify rare Pokémon from other regions. Yet, the tales of their appearances don’t match the Kantonian ones at all. Gary’s seen Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos up close in battle before. There’s no good reason to think that they could fit the criteria established by their Galarian lookalikes.

So, even if it is far from his ideal vacation spot, he decided in the end it would be worth the visit. What he wasn’t expecting was company.

Of course, he should have known better. Researchers the world over could have sampled the same data he did to conclude it was worth taking the trip this week of all weeks. But there is no one else in the world he expected to see less than the person he does.

Where the trees begin to thin atop the icy slope, the ghostly gleam of Articuno’s visage is just barely perceptible. Its glare is blinding; as Gary scales the hill, he has to hold one hand over narrowed eyes just to avoid its paralyzing effect. Its gaze not is not on him, but there is something of its mere presence that leaves him shaking from more than just the cold. It takes until he is only a few feet away to make out the figure frozen in front of it. Standing behind the trainer’s leg, just out of view of Articuno, is a Grookey.

Without taking so much as a moment to think about what he is doing or why he is doing it, Gary throws up Umbreon’s Poké Ball and shouts, “Umbreon, use Dark Pulse!”