jeffthelinguist asks:

Clownfish are all born male but in a group of male adult clownfish, one becomes bigger, meaner, and female. I’ve always thought clownfish would be a great fish Pokémon. (Granted we have a lot of fish Pokémon already but do we really need Basculim?) It could have an evolution method matching the gender changing and an anemone counterpart that it could mesh with in doubles. What do you think about this idea? How would you implement it?

First of all, an apology to this and dozen-odd other questions I have received over the past… month and a half, ish… which I will endeavour to answer over the course of the next week.

Now. I know one thing, and that is that we definitely do not need Basculin because Basculin is dumb.

But yeah, a clownfish could be fun… do we actually use a literal clown aesthetic, or is that too on-the-nose?  Too tacky?  Because it can’t be just a clownfish; there needs to be a twist to it… having a symbiotic anemone that squirts water, the way clowns wear flowers that squirt water, would be a fun link between clownfish and clown aesthetic, as well as an interesting inversion of the direction of the normal symbiotic relationship between clownfish and anemones… You know what, there’s a thought; let’s make this weird as hell.  Let’s have a clownfish Pokémon with a little anemone that uses Water-type attacks growing out of its side; give it moves like Scary Face or something as well to reflect its creepy-as-fµ¢& clown makeup.

All members of our clownfish Pokémon species are initially male, and they don’t evolve, as with Combee and Salandit.  When at least three are in a party together, the highest level one becomes female.  Then, when those females evolve, thei\r anemones become enormous, leaving just a little clownfish body dangling off the end of one tentacle.  Maybe have a type change from Water/Fairy (clowns are Fairy-type because of Mr. Mime) to Water/Poison?  Smaller males nest within the anemone bodies of the big females, in numbers that seem too large to be physically possible, like a clown car.  Unevolved males aren’t as cripplingly terrible as Combee and Salandit; there’s relatively little difference in base stat total between the two forms, because the evolved females are extremely slow.  In terms of creating some kind of doubles synergy between them… I think I want the unevolved male clownfish to have an ability that grants immunity to Poison attacks, with some kind of boost that triggers when hit by a Poison attack (a la Sap Sipper/Storm Drain/Motor Drive), and then we can give the evolved female clownfish-anemone a powerful Poison attack that hits everything in play, maybe some sort of thrashing tentacle thing.  That gives you a set-up that works essentially like using Earthquake with a Flying-type partner, or Discharge with a partner that has Volt Absorb.  Alternatively, just give the males Poison Heal and the females an attack that poisons everything in play.