I was re-reading your old Unova entries, and your one on Scraggy and Scrafty really annoys me. What is it about modern subcultures that make them inherently worse than mythology or biology? And besides, Scraggy and Scrafty are based on various features real life reptiles have, just viewed under an anthropmorphic lens. You complain it breaks your suspension of disbelief to see it so clearly based off human concepts, but never clarify why seeing human icons such as thunderbolts and letters don’t.
Point of clarification first: “complained,” not “complain;” this was almost four and a half years ago and honestly I’m not sure it reflects my current views terribly well nor am I motivated to spend a lot of time defending it, but since you ask…
Well, to begin with, drawing inspiration from biology doesn’t really need to be defended, because Pokémon are supposed to be biological creatures; that’s just self-evident, I think. But as for the cultural stuff… the difference, for me, is that the point of a Pokémon like Unown is that, in the context of the Pokémon world, letters are supposed to have come from the Unown, not the other way around. Writing is the result of humans imitating nature. Pokémon based on mythological or folkloric themes, likewise – the assumption is that, in the world being portrayed, the myths and icons and so on come from the Pokémon. And I suppose to an extent that is a matter of personal preference, but to me that makes sense for stuff that’s ancient, that’s been around for thousands of years, because Pokémon have been around since human civilisation began, and because in the real world myths and folklore really do exist to explain nature. When you have a Pokémon that seems like it’s meant to be part of a modern subculture, it sounds like nature imitating humanity, which is just a little bit ridiculous – although I suppose you could just as reasonably say that, in the Pokémon world, the ‘punk’ subculture was created by people who admired and identified with Scrafty’s tough, independent attitude.
Pokémaniacal 