Pokémonday voting 46 (11-27-2023) (Patreon)

Hi, welcome to the forty-sixth Pokémonday voting post!

Last week's prompt was:

...ideas for a very colorful Pokémon (because we lack color in our dex right now)!

Once again very fun to see you come up with wild ideas when the prompt allows for so much freedom. Some of the ideas were already very overrepresented (either in the official dex or in ours) so I picked four options that seemed the most unique/original to me. Check the poll below to see which ones made the cut!

And now it's time to reveal last week's winner!

Prompt: Ideas for a new Pokémon that evolves by using a Dawn Stone!

Winning idea: A male Salandit evolution! (Aetos, Thomas Brown & GoGoForIt)

Runner-ups:
2: A male Fomantis evolution (by Peter Passalacqua)
3: A male Combee evolution (by Miz Kriss)
4: A female Spoink evolution (by Haelerin)

HOWEVER!

I couldn't do it. I failed. Every idea for a male Salandit evolution that I came up with destroyed the whole concept of the Salandit/Salazzle line. Salazzle is based on a species of salamander that's female-only and the dex entries mention specifically how they are leaders of reverse harems of male Salandits and how the size of their group of male Salandit followers decides their social status. To introduce a male Salandit evolution completely destroyed this concept. And to make things worse, I also had to give it some kind of Dawn Stone properties, which is very difficult to do when you're dealing with an edgy dark poison lizard. I kind of knew this when I picked poll options, but I thought I'd be able to make it work anyway. Turns out I was wrong about that. I'm very sorry Aetos, Thomas Brown and GoGoForIt!

...So after hours of frustration I decided to give the number two a shot.

And this one made so much more sense. There's a bunch of other orchid mantis species that I could choose from, so I choose the spiny flower mantis:

This guy looks a lot more bright and shiny than the pink orchid mantis, which fits with the Dawn Stone theme. The spines make it look much more dangerous/fierce and Lurantis' "clothes" seem to be based on a kimono, so I made Epinantis' clothes look like a karate gi, which also reflects his Fighting type.

Hopefully I'll think twice about adding impossible ideas to the poll in the future. Thank you all for your creative ideas and good luck to the ideas in this poll. May the best idea win!