Why can’t psychic types, or at least some of them, eat things that have/had emotions? What would happen?

krokorokin:

bills-pokedex:

Psychic abilities tend to be stronger when the psychic in question is in physical contact with a target. Thus, imagine putting your mouth on something, only to hear the last dying scream of a once-living entity.

That’s why psychics generally prefer vegetarian lifestyles. Or at least the ralts line does. Many other psychics tend to have less potent empathic abilities (or aren’t quite as concerned), so eating meat or the like is less of an issue with them.

Sounds like some psychic types need to stop being little bitches.

…on the other hand, those same psychic-types have no qualms about generating miniature black holes in the general vicinity of anyone who calls them “little bitches.”

I have recently befriended a Ralts who has displayed suprising telepathic talent, but she has started avoiding some of my trainer friends, sometimes going as far as teleporting out of the area when they enter the room. Any advice?

Well, that depends. If your ralts had never met these trainers, she may be exhibiting her species’ signature shyness. If that’s the case, then it’s important to work with her and get her used to spending time around people other than you. Doing this involves a process similar to getting a pokémon acclimated to a new environment or a new teammate: start off gradually (perhaps by introducing her to only one or two friends) and work your way up until she can handle more.

If she seems disgruntled towards these trainers, however, or if this is a sudden change in behavior, then there are two possibilities for what might be going on. First, it’s possible that your ralts is experiencing jealousy. Members of the ralts family are some of the most loyal pokémon in existence, so they’re extremely protective and sometimes possessive of their trainers. It’s not unusual for a ralts to become aggressive towards other humans they feel are jeopardizing their relationship with their trainers. If this is the case, it’s important to explain to your ralts that your relationship with her isn’t going to change just because you’ve met new people. I would recommend increasing the amount of time you spend training her or giving her a bit more affection than usual to reinforce this.

The second option, meanwhile, is that there is something very wrong with the trainers you’ve befriended. Remember that members of the ralts line are talented empaths and can thus sense when someone is not being entirely truthful to you. If your ralts is reacting to specific friends or if she seems on edge as she teleports away, it’s important to communicate with her and try to determine what she’s detected. From there, you may be able to determine the best course of action, whether it’s reassuring your ralts that your new friends are trustworthy or taking action to distance yourself from potentially toxic people.

Whatever you do, anonymous, communication and observation are the keys. Pay attention not only to what your ralts is doing in general but also her body language and any other signal she may be sending you.

Best of luck!

How to take care of a ralts please?

I must admit, this depends on your circumstances, especially given the fact that ralts is a branched evolutionary family. While there are certainly similarities between how you would raise a ralts who will eventually be a gardevoir and a ralts who will eventually be a gallade, when you get to preparing for their evolutions, the training regimens you will need will undoubtedly be different. Likewise, as soon as your ralts evolves into a kirlia, you may need to adjust its lifestyle, depending on whether or not it wishes to evolve at all and what it wishes to evolve into. A gallade requires a diet heavy in protein (to build muscle) as well as exercises of a more physical nature (especially to build arm strength). Meanwhile, kirlia that don’t wish to evolve and kirlia that wish to evolve into gardevoir will need exercises geared more towards developing their psychokinetic abilities, including more meditation than actual physical fitness. Additionally, as they develop their psychic abilities, they’ll need to rely more on a plant-based diet to avoid consuming anything that could experience emotions upon death, as the psychic exercises may increase their empathic strength.

Speaking of which, that’s the main challenge in raising a ralts at all: the empathic factor. Young ralts especially will be a little uneasy as they get used to feeling your emotions, and thus, from an early age, they should be trained to build psychic barriers. Keeping other, older members of the ralts family (including gallade) could help, but really, any psychic pokémon capable of using telepathy will do. Younger ralts will also require a lot of meditation in order to teach them mindfulness, which in turn will help them control their own emotions and prevent themselves from projecting onto others (including you).

A lot of these exercises may consume much of your ralts’s time, so distractions for stress relief are absolutely necessary. Soft toys may be a good choice due to the comfort the ralts may derive from the way they feel, but be wary when getting anything with a face. Ralts who struggle with controlling their psychic abilities may inadvertently bond with their stuffed toys, which increases the risk of producing a shuppet if the toy ever needs to be discarded. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give a ralts a stuffed animal—just that if you do get them one, don’t let them or the rest of their team beat it up too much, and be sure to have them draw out any psychic energy when the toy is ready to be discarded. Otherwise, believe it or not, but stimming toys normally given to humans are also excellent choices. Moon sand as well, for that matter. The more a ralts’s physical senses can be engaged when playing with the toy, the better, as it allows it to focus on the physical realm, rather than the psychic. (They’re also rather fun to collect or create, but … that may simply be my own personal preference showing through.)

In terms of food, it’s a misconception that members of the ralts family are exclusively vegan. While they can’t eat meat that had been taken from a living animal, eggs and dairy are perfectly fine. Dairy, after all, is not a complex living thing in itself, and eggs have never reached the stage where they would have developed emotions. If you’re thinking of evolving your ralts into a gallade, as I’ve mentioned earlier, protein is a necessity, so eggs—along with vegetarian proteins such as nuts or soybeans—are an essential. Otherwise, ralts that you don’t wish to evolve or ralts that will eventually become gardevoir can be completely vegan—if they wish, anyway. It’s always a good idea to ask your ralts what it prefers.

Otherwise, taking care of a ralts is very much like taking care of a small child. They sleep in small beds (with blankets and a pillow, preferably), they can be toilet-trained, they bathe in similar ways to humans, and they often need the same sorts of affection we give children. It’s just that it’s very highly recommended that you avoid physical contact as much as possible with particularly young ralts until they develop the aforementioned psychic barriers, as projection from a psychic pokémon is not a particularly wondrous experience. Thus, as tempting as it may be, your ralts will really need its own bed, and you may wish to avoid hugging it as much as possible at first.

Best of luck, anonymous.

What are the red pinkish shard things on the Ralts family’s heads/bodies? What do they do

Those are their horns, actually. Every member of the ralts family has crystalline horns that act as psychic amplifiers, much in the way that kadabra and alakazam’s spoons or spoink and grumpig’s pearls do.

This is why it’s generally considered impolite to downright dangerous to touch those horns.

Without permission, anyway.

(No, this is not an opportunity to “kinkshame” the people in the notes.)

Some people may not know this, but unlike wilds ralts (whom are ‘attracted’ to kind-hearted trainers), ralts that are hatched from eggs from breeders (or worse, rescued from poke-mills) tend to form bonds with trainers that have latent physic abilities. These ralts, and their evolutions, have a stronger connection with their trainers, well beyond what the pokedex entries state.

Bill: It’s true that people with psychic abilities—latent or not—tend to form stronger bonds with psychic-types in general. This is for either of two reasons. First, if the trainer’s abilities are unlocked and overt, then it’s easier for that human to empathize with their pokémon, both emotionally speaking and psychically speaking. That is to say, psychics not only understand their pokémon better, but they can use their own abilities to forge connections with them. Likewise, trainers with unlocked abilities can sometimes use those same powers to strengthen the bond between themselves and their pokémon. Think of it like holding hands with someone, and neither of you want to let go.

Second, if the trainer’s abilities are latent, then the reverse happens, and the psychic-type will latch onto that human—perhaps even attempt to awaken those talents, in certain cases.

Of course, it should be noted that according to some experts, such as Saffron City’s own Sabrina, everyone has latent psychic abilities on one level or another, but to be fair, there is still some debate in the academic circles about whether or not this is true. Studies thus far have been largely inconclusive on the matter.

In short, what you say has more than a few grains of truth to it, dear reader, and ralts are indeed open to forming strong bonds with humans they feel a particularly intense level of empathy towards, especially if the human in question is capable of reciprocating psychically.

Why isn’t the Ralts family in the Human-Like egg group (other than “lol they cant breed with anything in there, silly!”)? They look a lot more human than Volbeat, Spinda, Buneary, etc. to me.

Because for whatever reason, members of the ralts line seem to be more inclined to mate with balls of gas, possessed trees, and chandeliers than things that look human.

Most researchers try not to think about it too much, frankly.

Honestly, Bill. Between the both of us, you’re the behavioral researcher, yet you give that kind of explanation.

Anonymous, it’s because members of the ralts line don’t wish to mate with things that remind them of their trainers because to them, it carries oedipal implications. The reason why ralts feel the need to protect their trainers so strongly is because they consider their trainers part of their family, so in short, other human-like creatures, even those that vaguely look human such as lopunny and spinda, don’t appeal to them.

Also, yes, this implies that the egg group system is based entirely on a pokémon’s preferences, rather than its ability to interbreed, and … it is. If you attempt to breed pokémon, you’ll notice that “compatible” pokémon will be nearly inseparable, but those that won’t produce an egg stay as far away from each other as possible. On a level, yes, these preferences are also inherent in every pokémon, but in theory, it’s possible for a male ralts and a jynx to breed. They just don’t because, well, they won’t. —LH

The Ralts Line

As an apology for our delay in both the response to the last question and our entries as a whole, please accept this special, extra entry for the day. Thank you for your patience. —LH

Ralts
The Feeling Pokémon
Type: Psychic/Fairy
Official Registration #: 280
Entry: A childlike pokémon native to the quieter forests of Hoenn. Because of its ability to sense the emotions of others, it typically avoids contact with anything that is not of the ralts line and is, therefore, extremely rare and difficult to find. However, because of its timidity, its soft but cute cry, and its eagerness to please others (in order to neutralize any negativity that surrounds it), it is also a popular pokémon among children and young adults … which very likely does absolutely nothing to alleviate ralts’s aversion to drama and high doses of extreme emotion.

Kirlia
The Emotion Pokémon
Type: Psychic/Fairy
Official Registration #: 281
Entry: The evolved form of ralts, by battle experience. Although kirlia possesses more mastery over its psychic abilities than its predecessor, it is still prone to being highly affected by the emotions of its trainer. For example, trainers who experience incredible emotions of joy or pride may cause their kirlia to dance with happiness. Trainers suffering through negative emotions will find that their kirlia has become lethargic and depressed. And trainers in the vicinity of other humans they find incredibly attractive will cause their kirlia to ███████

Really, Bill? Really? —LH

Gardevoir
The Embrace Pokémon
Type: Psychic/Fairy
Official Registration #: 282
Entry: The evolved form of kirlia, by battle experience. Only the strongest trainers who form the closest, most loving bonds with their kirlia may see their pokémon evolve to their final, natural forms. Thus, a gardevoir is born out of strong feelings of loyalty, so it stands to reason that gardevoir in general are inherently extremely protective of their trainers. This is true; all observable tamed gardevoir have been known to go to extreme lengths to protect their trainers from any potential threat. Unfortunately for most people, “extreme lengths” may include creating a miniature black hole, and “potential threat” may include literally anyone within five feet of their trainers.

Gallade
The Blade Pokémon
Type: Psychic/Fighting
Official Registration #: 475
Entry: The evolved form of male kirlia, by exposure to dawn stone. Although its sibling evolution results from the incredible bonds formed between a kirlia and another being, this does not mean gallade do not experience similarly intense urges to protect their trainers and loved ones. If anything, their ability to sense the emotions of potential foes, combined with the drive to battle inherent in all fighting-types and extreme fondness for using the swords hidden in their forearms, make them even more gung-ho about protecting the people and pokémon they value the most. Therefore, trainers should be extremely wary about teaching their gallade to attack only on command, rather than any time they sense danger. Well-meaning researchers who intend to give gallade to sisters with questionable tastes in men, however, are free to teach their pokémon whatever they wish.

They aren’t, but good try. —LH