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What do you all think the theme around the starters is gonna be?

PageEmperor

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So yeah, feel free to take any wild guess to what central theme around the starters could potentially be! For some generations, the starters were based around a certain thing such as myths, culture, RPG classes, etc. and they probably would also make a new theme to base the new starters off. What do you think they’d be?

I’ll take a shot at the dark: Adaptation. So basically the starters as they progress through the stages, will change their personalities to something different, usually to get stronger or because of something happening to them during their evolution.

For example, the fire starter starts of as a constantly happy, laid back creature, but maybe, when it evolves, painful looking spikes grow out of it, and in it’s final stage, it becomes an easily enraged and moves in ridiculously fast speeds. Or as the Water starter starts of as always wanting to be neat, but then once it evolves, it becomes a constantly fighting creature that actually likes to be messy. Just throwing out ideas.

After all, evo member lines don’t always have to be the same as each other: Vigoroth and Feebas say hi.

So what do you guys think?
 
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I'd rather there not be a theme. Themes are limiting and only stand to make a singular member of the group look weird on their own if used for something else in the future. I prefer my only 'where's the other two' thoughts coming about solely because of group association because they are always together in advertising or merch and stuff.

Like the starters in Legends: Arceus. It was odd seeing them not with their usual starter buds, but that was about it. Unlike if, say, I were wandering in a forest in a new game and all of a sudden I find Pansage, but Panpour and Pansear aren't in the game at all. Now that's weird because those three are basically joined at the hip as a tight knit counterpart much like many legendaries are. Another example woul be if you're doing an post-game quest and all of a sudden you can catch Landorus and ONLY Landorus and you don't see the others at all.
 
Honestly, I would totally be ok with the theme being "food" for the starters. It's an idea that hasn't been delved into much as of now and it would only strengthen the idea that Pokemon and humans live in harmony.
 
I have a idea.
1: Jobs:
I think the idea of starters growing up and their lines based on jobs would be cool,maybe sprigatito could be a Singer (there description says that loves to be the focus off attention) she could be Grass/Fairy or Grass/Electric based on a pop star!
Fuecoco could be a chef,you know,is Spain is very famous for being one of the countries with the most famous gastronomy and he's based on a typical Spanish dish! (pimiento relleno) Could be interesting see him getting a pan for a tail and can be a Fire/Steel starter!
Quaxly could be a Cop, he loves pulcritud and maybe that's involving he loves justice and order and could be a Water/Fighting type!
 
I just hope they aren't humanoid or have weird moustaches. Might seem like a weird complaint but there are so many Pokémon in SwSh that have moustaches. It works for some Pokemon like Mr Rime but look weird on others and makes them pointlessly gendered.

I also don't like food themes. I want them to look and feel natural. That is the problem with Incineroar and the Galar starters.
 
Still going with pepper crocodile (fire/grass, regardless of leaks), rose bush (grass) or cattail (grass/water) lynx, and pirate (water/fire) duck. There probably won't be a connecting theme this time around.

I just hope they aren't humanoid or have weird moustaches. Might seem like a weird complaint but there are so many Pokémon in SwSh that have moustaches. It works for some Pokemon like Mr Rime but look weird on others and makes them pointlessly gendered.
I see Pokémon with facial hair the same as like female dwarves. It's gender neutral. Also they're animals and animals just have weird facial fur and wiskers regardless of what they are.

I mean even Lopunny and Gardevoir can be male and Machamp can be female. The only questionably gendered mon are probably the hitmons (what makes them exclusively male? Especially hitmonchan and his little dress.), Kangaskan and Mandabuzz (why no male form?), and Braviary (why no female form?). But those have nothing to do with body types or mustaches or whatever.
 
I see Pokémon with facial hair the same as like female dwarves. It's gender neutral. Also they're animals and animals just have weird facial fur and wiskers regardless of what they are.

I mean even Lopunny and Gardevoir can be male and Machamp can be female. The only questionably gendered mon are probably the hitmons (what makes them exclusively male? Especially hitmonchan and his little dress.), Kangaskan and Mandabuzz (why no male form?), and Braviary (why no female form?). But those have nothing to do with body types or mustaches or whatever.
They're animals (well, sort of), but the mustaches in question are based on human males' mustaches, not on animals' whiskers or fur. That's too gendered for me. Yes, I get why Thievul and Rattata have them, but that's exactly why they bother me in a way that, say, Stoutland's doesn't.
(Yet I wouldn't count, for exemple, Kricketune's very-much-not-a-whisker mustache as too gendered, I've had females ones and it didn't bother me... so I can't pinpoint what makes Thievul's and Rattata's Too Much for me, but they are, and i'd want either gender differences or a male-only lock on them.)

Lopunny, Gardevoir and Machamp have designs that lean to one gender stereotype, but without taking it too far, imo. There's little reason to gender-lock them.
(Lopunny doesn't have anything exclusively female to its design, except the fact that playboy bunnies tend to be women, and that's... unfortunate and best left ignored.
Gardevoir has a dress, but it's not like men never wore what we'd consider dresses today, or can't play the mystical psychic waif role, i'm sure we can find plenty of examples of that in anime. (I loved that the line wasn't female-only even though they had the ability to implement that by then, and that Wally/Mitsuru had a male Gardevoir (a frail-looking and sensitive pokémon, but not to be underestimated, like him) in gen 3. Very disappointed that they changed it in ORAS, I'm glad Tokio is picking up the slack in Journeys.)
Machamp is a just a muscular humanoid.)

Hitmonchan has a tunic, that's unisex (though i keep reading its name as hitmon-chan), and indeed the hitmons have no reason to be male-only except more of the same stereotypes. (Same goes for the Chansey line, there are male nurses and I want them in pokémon in all that round and pink glory. Also Liligant.)
Kangaskhan and Mandibuzz are based on mothers, and probably (directly for Kangaskhan, indirectly for Mandibuzz if it's a reference) the product of the gen 1 combination of early weirdness and technicall limits that also gave us the Nidos as two separate lines. Originally, we were probably meant to assume that males of the species existed in some form, but they never added them in later games, so i guess it's just a canonically female-only species now.
Braviary gets hit indirectly by that as a counterpart to Mandibuzz.

TLDR no more gender-locks in Pokémon, society has evolved (pun unintended) past the need for gender-locks in Pokémon, except for the mustaches.

(Anyway, seconding the hope for not too humanoid or mustached final forms, mostly because it makes them feel too removed from their first stages that we get months to get used to. Like, I don't dislike Inceneroar because it's too gendered, it's fine on its own, I dislike it as the Litten final evo and I would dislike a grass version of it as the Sprigatito final evo.)
 
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