#trainer orla

They grew up as next door neighbors in Vermilion City.

Orio's parents were in the shipping industry. Her father was a sailor, while her mother was an engineer down at the shipyard. (And, occasionally, the local Gym when Lt Surge blew the power again.) She had two younger twin sisters.

Friede's father was (and is) unknown. Friede was never told why his father wasn't around, only that he wasn't. His mother, who had inherited the house from her grandmother, resented that her (she felt) promising career as a trainer got cut short by her pregnancy. So as soon as Friede was old enough to be able to make cereal and sandwiches for himself (about four or five or so), she told him that she was going to the store . . . and then never came back.

Fortunately, Friede and Orio were already playmates by that time, and her parents weren't about to let him starve. Though Friede insisted he stay in his own house for when his mom came back, he ate many dinners at Orio's house, and her parents made sure that he stayed clothed and healthy.

(If one were to wonder if perhaps Friede's open door, "stay as long as you need" policy on the Brave Asagi had anything to do with how Orio's family gave that to him after his mom left, well . . . perhaps the idea is not so far off.)

When they were ten, Friede and Orio applied for (and received) their Trainer Licenses. They also received their first partner pokémon, albeit in different ways; Orio's father brought her a beldum from an overseas trip he took to Hoenn, while Friede applied for a starter pokémon from Professor Oak, who accepted his application and allowed him to choose a charmander.

The two planned to travel around Kanto together to collect badges, but Orio's mother received a job offer in Slateport City, Hoenn. Naturally, she wanted Orio to move there with the family, and Friede was invited . . . but he turned the offer down, wanting to explore Kanto first and see all that it had to offer, and promised to reunite with Orio someday.

("Are you sure you don't want to come?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I want to investigate that haunted tower in Lavender Town. I heard that trainers who go in never come out. Doesn't that sound interesting?"

"Are you stupid?")

So Orio moved to Hoenn, where she accepted first a scholarship to the school in Rustboro City, and later an internship at Devon Corporation. That experience allowed her to get a job at the local shipyard, not because of her mother's experience there, but by her own merit. (She was actually hired to a higher position right off the bat; her mother was never so proud.)

As for Friede, well, he did collect the eight Kanto badges, though he had no desire to enter the League. (When asked why he collected the badges, then, he said, "Why not?") He did investigate Lavender Tower, and was only a little disappointed he and Char survived their sleepover. When he was sixteen, he took the entrance exam for a prestigious Kantonian university on a lark and passed with near perfect marks. He received a full ride, and it was there that he was taught and mentored by Lucca.

OH BOY DO I

so dot is the most obvious choice. there is no universe in which she is not autistic to me. this is one of my strongest dot headcanons actually and one of the main reasons i enjoy her as a character. there are so many reasons for this i could go on endlessly but i'll just list a few big ones here

her extreme passion for her interests at a disregard for almost everything else & her ability to self teach those topics (not to mention her interests have to do with computing)

her difficulties with food overlap a lot with food sensitivities autistic people often have, also her latching onto donuts as a sort of samefood after finally trying them once

the tendency to wear loose, comfortable clothes and more recently she has complained while wearing tighter clothes (the orange academy school uniform) so it's not just that she prefers loose fabric, she also is put off by the alternative. girl your sensory problems

irritable outbursts when struggling to articulate herself/make herself understood

her connection with kanuchan (tinkatink) felt really neurodivergent to me. she wasn't offput by her behavior, even after stealing her prop mic, and was immediately able to understand her when no one else could or was willing to. not sure how to articulate this one right now but i hope you see what i mean

her tendency to sit cross legged and lean over herself reminds me a lot of my personal autistic tendency to need a pressure/weighted feeling while i sit or have body parts touching

social exhaustion, the need to be alone sometimes even when she cares

the list genuinely goes on i have to stop myself LOL

as for other characters,

so for liko i'm more loose about the headcanon, it's definitely more of me projecting than her being overtly autistic in canon but i still think it lines up if u wanna view her that way. i'm autistic and i personally relate to liko a lot becauseee

she is giving hyperempathy autism to me. the way she is overly empathetic and compassionate to her own detriment and yet still has to have her hand held through articulating & dealing with that or putting the logical parts of empathy together

the way she absolutely fucking Explodes with excitement sometimes

the way in which she relates to cats, and her whole thing about having a hard time getting other people to understand her. these two things go hand in hand

there's something neurodivergent about her trying to connect with sprigatito by studying her and writing notes about her behavior lol

while this is kind of just on the account of her being an anime character and a protagonist at that, liko's facial expressions and body language can be pretty exaggerated sometimes which reminds me of my own body language, i'm cartoonishly animated in real life often LOL

so like basically dot is so obviously autistic to me it's like breathing but for liko it's kind of a hc i apply to her for projection purposes & fun but i think it's reasonable

and lastly so i'm not just talking about solely liko and dot for the millionth time,

ORIO!! honestly we don't even know that much about orio but the one episode where she was helping pokeball lady i forget the name of fix her machine. the really narrow attention to detail/seeing the smaller parts instead of the bigger picture. also her expertise in engineering contrasted with her struggling with tasks outside of that (like when she was trying to sew holes in the brave asagi and for the life of her could not do it so she called murdock for help lol)

and actually one more - while i don't necessarily headcanon amethio as autistic, i think it's a fun headcanon/au idea to not only give him a redemption arc but an autism unmasking arc at the same time. representation for all my repressed autistics out there. in my mind