#that even if looker and interpol are aware of what giovanni really is

[fallershipping]

I don't think I ship Nanu with anyone... I think? Because I can say that some ship art of him is stuff I like, but nothing really hits me home as "this is THE ship for me."

... But maybe that title does fit for Nanu/Giovanni. ... But probably a specific way for me.

Like Giovanni is rather old news, to the point that Looker is much more aware of stuff like Galactic and Plasma in his mind. The events of Gen 1/3 were like 15-20 years ago maybe, and Giovanni has disbanded, tried to come back, and then stopped AGAIN. Even ended up in a world tournament at Unova at some point...

Giovanni and Nanu feel like they are a "Cat and Mouse Chase" but then the cat and mouse got elderly and retired. In their prime, it was intense, maybe even passionate, maybe even dangerous. And now, I can only imagine Giovanni ending up at Nanu's door like a wet cat. The world kinda forgot him... But Interpol hasn't forgotten his long list of human and Pokemon deaths by his hands/hired guns so......

I think Nanu would be the perfect person to take some pity on him because they're two halves of a whole. And btw this is still like HGSS Giovanni... NOT Rainbow Rocket Giovanni. RR Giovanni is actually batshit insane. Bro, he literally tried to turn Lusamine into a mind broken slave with NIHILEGO VENOM, it was WEIRD. (I'M NOT JOKING OR EXAGGERATING. THAT.. WHAT THE FUCK GAMEFREAK.)

But as for Nanu himself... I don't think he'd stay in a relationship and not because he's "broken" but I just think he is happily somewhat Aromantic or just isn't the type to want a committed relationship. That's who he is, that's how life works for him and it genuinely makes him happy. Even if a long retired Giovanni returns for a bit, it's casual, and whatever mess Gio has Nanu heartily knows that it is not his monkeys, not his circus.

So Nanu is fun to see be a James Bond flirt, mostly in his working years and still a bit in his retired years. you know what throw in Pansexual into the mix too. No gender, no problem.

[rocketbcssarchive]

So reasons why I have that headcanon and why I get so salty about people metagaming and miraculously knowing who Giovanni really is?

In the anime, no one knows who Giovanni really is, hell people outside of Kanto don’t even seem to know about Team Rocket, which actually makes me giddy considering how big the organisation is but I digress. Ash never makes a point of correcting Agatha in that episode in the Hoenn arc - presumably since he hasn’t even made the connection that Giovanni the Gym Leader = Giovanni the Leader of Team Rocket.

In the games, Giovanni being the gym leader of the Viridian Gym is THE plot twist of RBY/FRLG. Literally no one knew. People in Viridian City were actually happy to have their missing gym leader back. 

And if the Indigo League really knew about that connection they might have done something to shut down the gym since they seem to have at least that much power when they assigned Green as the next gym leader in GSC/HGSS. Also no one really seemed to give any fucks when Giovanni showed up again in the Pokemon World Tournament in BW2 (but it’s debatable how canon that really is, pfft). 

In pokespe, Giovanni goes out of his way to assume another identity in order to get Red to trust him. And he does a pretty friggin good job of it since Red trusts Giovanni and doesn’t suspect a thing right up until Giovanni finally tells him during their big confrontation. Every time Giovanni meets someone new, no one recognises him – Yellow certainly didn’t, Blaise certainly didn’t. 

Admittedly, the manga kinda plays fast and loose with Giovanni’s identity, but with Yellow it kinda shows how the average trainer doesn’t seem to know a lot about Team Rocket and with Blaise that members of other rival organisations don’t seem to be privy to that sort of information either.

In pokemon generations, I leave you with this scene: even friggin interpol didn’t know. 

And finally, just… trying to inject a bit of real world basics into this. I’m fairly certain you and I don’t know who happens to be the current leader of whatever big mafia organisation that’s out there, especially with ones that’s happening outside our respective countries. If I were walking down a street and I bumped into some mafia don I definitely wouldn’t know. Even if his face happened to be plastered all over the news like five years ago, that’s not the kind of thing that stays in a person’s memory unless they have some sort of special interest in the criminal underworld.