Favorite Pokémon

[Negrek]

Realized we don't have a thread for this, which is obviously a huge oversight.

So... what's your favorite pokémon? If you have trouble narrowing things down or just want to spend some time sorting pokémon, the favorite pokémon picker can help.

For a long time my favorite pokémon was a pretty solid three-way tie between Mewtwo, Lugia, and Absol, but these days I have to admit... Yeah, Mewtwo stands out above the others. :P While there are plenty of other pokémon where I really enjoy the design or have a personal connection with them as a result of playing with them in one of the games, Mewtwo is one of the few pokémon characters to actually get a decent amount of development. There are loads of interesting themes going on with him, from considerations of personhood to what it means to be an "improved" form of a pokémon that some people consider godlike, I eat up all the mad science trappings, and he's got that special pokémon blend of just enough tantalizing info to get you started, but tons of leeway for interpretation and expanding on his story. Plus he's psychic and psychics r kewl.

Most of my other favorites fall into the category of hulking tankish pokémon, like chesnaught, nidoking, and aggron, or meme/joke pokémon like nosepass, stunfisk, and sandygast. Super pleased to see stunfisk get a new form in Galar and hoping it will continue to return in more regional dexes in the future. Overall Gen III probably has the greatest share of pokémon that I really like, and Gen IV the least.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

This is a tricky one for me. I don't really "do" favourites, and there are countless pokémon I'm about equally fond of.

Still, I'd have to say that Mewtwo is definitely up there for more or less the same reasons as yours! He's been a long-held minor fixation of mine for a bunch of reasons, and will continue to be. On the other hand, he feels like he's a creature apart from other pokémon and not to be included in the same rankings, you know?

My top favourites I tend to reveal are espeon, flygon and absol, but it's such a strain to pick those over others. I just love so many pokémon! I think I have a longstanding bias towards charismatic, "cool" pokémon, but these days I'm fondest of the more creative designs.

 

[Ambyssin]

This was what the site spat out back when I did it; granted this was pre-SwSh, so I'm not sure what's changed. Still, almost all of these were in Guiding Light in some capacity. XD

 

[Virgil134]

I did this one a while ago for my favorites of each type. Almost all of these appear in my writing one way or another.

 

[Ambyssin]

I am still baffled by your choice of ledian. XD

 

[Virgil134]

I am still baffled by your choice of ledian. XD

Well, writing Kichiro when working on Fledglings has definitely helped with that. 😅

 

[Chibi Pika]

So I'm one of those people who compulsively sorts and lists things, so I already know my top ten favorite mons without using the favorite picker:

Spoiler: Top Ten

1. Lucario
2. Lugia
3. Charizard
4. Palkia
5. Chesnaught
6. Latios/Latias
7. Tyranitar
8. Silvally
9. Togekiss
10. Mewtwo

Technically this list hasn't been updated for Galar, but I think it'd remain pretty solid. Some of my Galar faves include Dracozolt, Appletun, and Zacian, but I have a hard time imagining any of them dethroning my top ten.

I'm kind of a weirdo in that I don't tend to go out of my way to feature Pokemon that I like in my fics. :P Other than the fact that I naturally like Legendaries, and I'm writing a Legendary-centric fic. Palkia definitely wasn't on my top ten list before I started writing it, however. And my all-time favorite Lucario is unlikely to ever feature in anything I write.

I think Gen 4 probably contains my highest number of favorites, although Gen 6 has the fewest Pokemon I dislike. My faves overwhelmingly trend toward stereotypical "cool" mons, but I've gotten more of an appreciation for derp mons as I've gotten older. Scraggy and Archen are probably still in my top twenty.

Quite a few Lugia fans in the thread already. I had no idea Lugia was in Negrek's top three!

 

[Ambyssin]

I'm kind of a weirdo in that I don't tend to go out of my way to feature Pokemon that I like in my fics. :P

You... you literally gave your main character a charizard, though.

 

[Chibi Pika]

You... you literally gave your main character a charizard, though.

Well if you waaaant me to add the cumbersome caveat of "aside from the fact that all the protags' teams were picked by me and my friends when we were 12, and my favorite Pokémon list has almost completely changed since then aside from Charizard still being near the top" then sure, but that doesn't have too much bearing on my preferences as an author ever since then. :P

 

[Sike Saner]

Glalie.

I have six favorites, but glalie is the top. The other five (in no particular order) are koffing, alakazam, magmar, wobbuffet, and nosepass.

 

[Ambyssin]

Glalie.

 

[Starlight Aurate]

Late to the game (why have I been digging up old threads lately?) but I tend to favor cute-sy Pokemon and "cool" or sleek-looking Pokemon. And Water-types. Other than my love for Water-types being reflected in my fic about Team Aqua, I also don't tend to showcase my favorite Pokemon in my fics. My all-time favs would have to be:

1. Squirtle
2. Mightyena
3. Mew

And then the others like Jirachi, Ho-Oh, and Vaporeon fall underneath them. I tend to not care for the designs of most Pokemon past Gen IV. I usually thought they were ugly or looked too similar to previous Pokemon (mostly Dedenne tho lol). I also used to love Eevee but then I realized everyone else loved Eevee and I need to deviate from what's mainstream but I just kinda fell away from it. Still super cute, though.

 

[DeliriousAbsol]

There are too many! Too many! Writing fanfiction gives me way too many favourites! Hmm...

Absol would be an obvious choice. But then there's:
Zorua
Mawile
Meowstic
Mothim
Whismicott
Alcremie
Typhlosion
Inteleon
Eevee (I have to put her, there's one glaring over my shoulder)
Reshiram
Dedenne
Zeraora

I probably need to re-do one of those 'Favourite Pokemon of each type' things again XD but if you want a more focused idea, it's the top five I listed ;) I'm probably one of very few people who absolutely loves Mothim <3

 

[Phoenixsong]

I can only definitively rank my top and bottom two (giratina > skiddo > a shrug emoji repeated 890 or so times > roselia > ambipom). Mightyena is definitely top ten, almost definitely top five and probably in third place like 95% of the time. Obstagoon seems to have wedged itself into the top 5–10 fairly solidly. Beyond that, though, they start to merge into amorphous, ever-shifting blobs of varying degrees of "love" and "like" and "sure, pretty nice" and "being reminded of the fact that you are a thing is mildly pleasant" and "you certainly exist, don't you? good for you". There aren't any pokémon that I hate or even actively dislike; even roselia is more of an illogical lingering resentment over a li'l hiccup from ages ago than any sort of strong distaste. IDK, they're all pokémon, so I think they're all pretty neat!

re: lugia: Sometimes I feel like I might be the only person who actually likes ho-oh more than lugia, haha. That wasn't always the case, and lugia's great, too. But I got better, and now I guess I just gotta wait for the rest of you heathens to catch up and see the rainbow-colored light. (Except Starlight Aurate! She gets to be awesome over here with me. ;) )

re: mewtwo: Mewtwo's grown on me a lot recently, I gotta admit. It's definitely got story potential, but it never really stuck with me all that much when I was younger, for whatever reason. (Yeah, sure, mewtwo's edgy and creepy and weird, etc., if you say so, etc., look, pal, I didn't come to Cinnabar for a lecture on the Pokémon Mansion's problems, just point me in the direction of the nearest missingno..) TBH it was mostly glitch-related ideas that sparked more recent interest in what mewtwo had to offer as a fic subject/participant... which I guess just means that glitches are still cooler than mewtwo, but it is a lot of fun to play with!

re: representation of favorites in fic: I dunno, I don't think my favorites feature overwhelmingly in my plans. By far my most common method for choosing pokémon to include in an idea is "I need something that fits x niche, let me go find a pokédex and filter down to everything that meets that criteria", rather than "I actively want to work with y favorite". Like, vikavolt's a cool pokémon, sure, but it's not anywhere near a top fave; I chose the grubbin line for my current project because certain properties of grubbin et al are useful for the story I want to tell. Sometimes I even go out of my way to pick things I wouldn't normally use or that I don't think feature in fic all that often, just to keep things interesting. Sure, give the protagonist a carnivine to offset that buizel, and have his friend take down a garchomp with a forretress!

I definitely have some ideas that involve giratina, and skiddo's in the current project (that it's taken me this long is frankly criminal and I would like to formally apologize to skiddo for this thoughtless omission), and I'm not ashamed to use favorites or popular/over-represented pokémon in a fic. I just don't go out of my way to do it for any specific purpose all that often. It's more likely that using it in a fic Because That's What I Need causes it to become a favorite—that's definitely what happened with giratina! That said, a lot of them do seem to be popping up in said current project... and if it ever goes anywhere, I guess you can expect the grubbin line to catapult its way to the top of the charts, lol.

and I really should write more mightyena stuff anyway if only to get some fic out into the world where it's actually a dang hyena instead of Dog Pokémon #45823572358023, and also seriously skiddo I'm so sorry I promise you'll be adorable if I can get this idea to work ;-;

 

[AmericanPi]

I try never to outright dislike any Pokémon, but my top six (six because that gives me a full Pokémon team) are Toucannon, Articuno, Pidgeot, Meganium, Flareon, and Liepard. I also like to defend commonly disliked and/or forgotten Pokémon, for example I wrote a novella focusing on Lumineon once.

@Phoenixsong I don't want to start a fight, but if it's alright with you I'm curious about why Ambipom is your least favorite Pokémon.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Nothing to fight about! Like I said, it's not even like I hate it. It's just probably the one whose design does it for me the least, y'know? Not terribly fond of the "haircut", don't see why it has those swollen orb-hands instead of more, y'know, dexterous ones. I can see how other people might find it more amusing than I do, but I just kinda look at it and... eh! Nothing all that interesting if you were looking for a fic subject, haha. (Though I'm sure someone could get a good fic out of it regardless!)

 

[AmericanPi]

Nothing to fight about! Like I said, it's not even like I hate it. It's just probably the one whose design does it for me the least, y'know? Not terribly fond of the "haircut", don't see why it has those swollen orb-hands instead of more, y'know, dexterous ones. I can see how other people might find it more amusing than I do, but I just kinda look at it and... eh! Nothing all that interesting if you were looking for a fic subject, haha. (Though I'm sure someone could get a good fic out of it regardless!)

Haha, I was wondering if it had something to do with Smogon/the competitive Pokémon battling community, which has a bit of a beef with Ambipom because it's consistently used in higher tiers where it is outclassed and doesn't perform well (in Generations 6 and 7 at least, there was a lot of "stop using Ambipom" sentiment). I kind of feel bad about its situation in competitive Pokémon because it could theoretically perform decently in lower tiers if it could just drop to PU or something, but at least Dawn's Ambipom had a nice character arc in the anime? I get you though :)

 

[Bluwiikoon]

My favourite is Nosepass! It is cute and friend-shaped!

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I don't pay enough attention to competitive stuff to hear about anything except "Landorus is OP" and "stealth rock is meta-defining". Such things don't inform the pokémon I like—I go off how good I think the design is and my personal degree of attachment.

 

[cynsh]

Quilava is my favourite. It never originally was, but the swathes of adorable fanart swayed me. I mean, even its default bulbapedia picture is precious!
Other favourites: zorua, nickit, arcanine, lucario, linoone, lyranroc, ivysaur, suicune... too many to name really. I tend to enjoy more 'animal-like' pokemon (possibly a byproduct of writing PMD, where it's difficult to fit in, say, a claydol), and having lots of fur/fluff always helps.
I am also unashamedly biased when it comes to choosing species to write about, which is why almost all of the above played some role in my previous story 😅