gotta catch 'em all!
hello and welcome to my pokemon shrine! click the links below to navigate.
favorite pokemon
i love the idea that all pokemon can be someone's favorite. here is a page dedicated to the ones i really like! some of them i've used on my team, some of them i admire for their design, some others just have good vibes. i have a separate page dedicated to my team, who are favorites in another, perhaps deeper way, but many of them show up here too. :)
can we have a fucking shellder moment
i love shellder. he is my number one boy.
me & shellder
although shellder is from Gen I, i didn't really notice him much. his most notable appearance to me was in my sister's drawings – she made gijinkas of some pokemon and depicted shellder as the weenie younger brother of cool guy cloyster. being a young girl, i loved cool guy cloyster, but also liked her interpretation of shellder. (i have a soft spot for weenies.)
anyway, the gijinkas made little impact on how much i liked the actual pokemon, so it wasn't until i played pokemon sun in 2020 that i found out how special this little guy was. i was looking for an ice type for some reason, and remembered i liked cloyster so i went and looked for how to catch a shellder. after a couple of tries fishing at kala'e bay, i caught him and was ready to train him up to level 32, at which point he would learn razor shell and i would evolve him.
however.
in the process of training him, i fell in love... every time i'd take care of him after a battle, he would close his eyes cutely, trusting me to wipe his shell clean of dirt and blowdry him (a mechanic i still find funny). he'd eat the poke beans i'd give him and tilt from side to side happily in a dance, silly tongue flopping about. i went to the pokemon nickname changer and had them dub him "baby", because that's what he'd become: my baby! i've since named all shellders i've caught in subsequent games "baby" as well.
^LOOK HOW CUTE. (from my instagram.)
i mourned when i evolved him into cloyster—not because i disliked cloyster's coolness, but because he would lose some of that silly charm. he became a powerful member of my team, and i loved him all the same, because he was of course still my baby. but i would never forget my memories with him when he was a shellder, and i was forever changed by our time together! he'd become my favorite pokemon, doing his cute little tilty dance all the way to the number one spot in my heart.
also: when i was a kid, i stuck a bunch of random stickers on my window that i never removed. i discovered, after dubbing shellder my favorite pokemon, that one of the stickers... was shellder! it was meant to be.
facts about shellder
- he is 1 foot tall and weighs 4kg.
- he swims backwards! (he does this on land too, if you camp with him in SwSh or SV...)
- shellder apparently is the thing on the tail of a slowbro, and the crown on the head of a slowking, but he sure doesn't look it.
- his name is the same in japanese and in english.
- shellder used to be drawn with its eyes much smaller and closer together, but in recent years they're bigger and further apart, making him look cuter.
- in SuMo, he eats the poke...beans (?) by just licking them. this is somehow effective and makes the same chewing sound the other pokemon make when they eat the beans.
- in his shiny form, he has an orange shell. zero other changes.
- in PMD Red Rescue Team / Blue Rescue Team, he says very confidently, "my shell is harder than any diamond!" okay little man!
- if you catch him, he might be carrying a pearl (50% chance) or a big pearl (5% chance) which you can then sell in shops, or treasure forever as a symbol of your friendship.
- according to the ultra moon pokedex entry for shellder, "if you give its tongue a good yank, the shock will cause shellder to open its shell." well jeez! don't do that!
- shellder uses his tongue to dig in the sand for food or to make himself a place to sleep.
- i know i keep using he/him pronouns (sorry) but shellder has an equal gender ratio.
the anti-fave list
AKA pokemon i have beef with for no reason. no photos for these guys because i don't want them to take up space in my storage.
- abomasnow!!!!!!!! specifically candice's abomasnow who wiped out my party using "avalanche" a billion times when i played diamond at the tender age of 10
- paras and parasect for not letting a girl catch a break in the wild (legends arceus)
- beldum get the FUCK in the pokeball
- cetoddle and cetitan, i just think they're ugly
- toxicroak freaks me out. he is not my friend.
- (croagunk, however, is my friend.)
- bruxish. i just don't like the face it makes. glalie too for the same reason. like please get it together
- i dislike the -oruses... enamorus, thundorus, landorus, and the other guy (i am writing from memory). why are they just people. they're also SO annoying in PLA
- why does walrein look like that after being so cute in its first two forms... upsetting.
- salamence has a fuckass design lmaoooo
- greedent. just kind of punchable sorry...
- thievul. why the hell did you give him a mustache!!! nickit was so cute, and had such potential to be a fave of mine. i guess the mustache appeals to some folk but not me...
- grimmsnarl is also not my friend
- rellor and rabsca, same thing as cetoddle line