#it would be less like this if the twin serpent had like . viper heads or something

[raptorrobot]

i love messmer's fight not because it's fun and well balanced but because his stupid cute little snakes wobbling around when he runs absolutely decimates his intimidating aura so fucking hard . it's like seeing a heavily tatted biker type walk past and then noticing him holding two kittens in his arms

[stelera]

I just submitted my entry for a Fakemon contest hosted by Subjectively for their Mazah Region. I figured I could share it here too and let people check it out! I’m still working on learning the Sugimori shading style  and I know this doesn’t quite fit right but I am happy with the way it turned out.

Lots more info below the cut!

Pokédex Entry: A constant stream of alternating electrical currents runs between its two brains, allowing them to function as one mind. While other multi-headed Pokémon often disagree with each other, Omehuattl's heads work in perfect synchronicity making it a brutally efficient hunter. Its bite is capable of rendering foes several times its size paralyzed with a potent mix of venom and electricity. When not on the hunt, these Pokémon like to relax coiled around power lines, soaking up inductive current to recharge its body.

Base Stats: HP: 70 Atk: 87 Def: 68 SpAtk: 44 SpDef: 60 Spd: 76 Total: 405

Ability: Twin Strike - The base attack power of every move is halved, but every attack that hits, hits twice. The second attack always uses the accuracy check result of the first attack. Attacks that already hit more than once, such as Fury Attack will have the ability to hit from 2 to 10 times. Only the first hit is able to be a critical hit. Secondary effects that trigger on hit, trigger for each hit. This ability cannot be copied or transferred.

Hidden Ability: Static

Signature Move: Current Winding – The user coils its electrically charged body around the foe, trapping it and shocking it for several turns. – A  physical, electric type binding move that partially traps the foe and deals a small amount of damage for anywhere between two and five turns. (Basically an electric type Fire Spin or Sand Tomb)

Type: Electric Category: Physical PP: 15 (max. 24) Power: 35 Accuracy: 85% Makes contact Affected by Protect Not affected by Magic Coat Not affected by Snatch Affected by Mirror Move Affected by King's Rock

Mechanical Notes: I wanted this Pokémon to be a single evolution Pokémon that would still be decent to have in your team. I didn't want its stats to be too incredible, but I will let the game designers have free reign when it comes to any tweaks they want to make to the stats if it ends up in the Mazah Region game. I gave it kind of below average stats for a final form because of its signature ability – I wanted something to offset an ability I know would be very interesting and tempting in competitive play with some kinda sub-par stats. Between the signature binding move Current Winding and the 2x chance to proc secondary effects, especially flinching, (give this thing a King's Rock and say hello to the para-flinch champion of the Mazah Region!) I wanted it to give it less than stellar stats to make it less appealing of a choice for higher level play. Not saying it couldn't make shenanigans happen, I watch Temp6t and PradYT and I know what shenanigans Pokémon with mediocre stats can get up to, but I wanted it to be a fun challenge to make those shenanigans happen.

Design Inspiration: I got the initial idea from an Aztec sculpture of a two-headed serpent made of topaz-encrusted wood – it was a sculpture that had always interested me in the past and was just begging to be made into a Pokémon. Looking at the list of types we'd been given, I picked Electric as my base point and started sketching. I decided pretty early on it needed to be Electric/Poison type, and I started drawing inspiration from horned vipers. Then I remembered a friend's recent trip to Costa Rica, where he got to see Eyelash Vipers and sent us lots of pictures. So I looked at lots of pictures of Eyelash Vipers and decided that needed to be part of the design. The crests over the eyes being shaped like lightning bolts were perfect, and I did a bunch of sketches of head shapes from different angles with the mouth open and closed before I settled on the two heads in my final design.

The zigzag pattern down the back is more reminiscent of rattlesnakes, perhaps, but I was inspired there by a quilt pattern made by the same friend who went to Costa Rica (he also owns like, four snakes so I guess this design is dedicated to him, lol). I picked red and blue as the colors because of red and blue representing the two phases of “hot” conductors in a three-wire electrical system (in the US that's generally the 240V connection you'd see on your dryer hookup, but when looking at a waveform it's generally red & blue – hello yes my day job is electrical transmission & distribution engineering).

Another interesting tie-in here is that “hot” is used by electrical workers to refer to energized conductors, and by herpetologists to refer to venomous snakes and reptiles. There's also a parallel there between electric attacks causing paralysis in Pokémon as well as neurotoxic venom causing paralysis in real life. The fangs are also a copper color to show that they could deliver a venomous bite, or they could be electrical leads and making contact across both fangs would deliver a powerful shock.

Another thing that inspired part of it's Pokédex entry, about it coiling around electrical wires, is the principle of inductance – electromagnetic fields generated by current flowing through conductors can induce electrical currents in wires wound around them called inductors. This is also what makes transformers work. I thought at first of making it's body corkscrewed to emphasize the inductor inspiration, but didn't want its body pose to be too similar to that of Seviper. Instead I gave its body a more angular pose rather than a smooth  slender serpentine shape to somewhat resemble a lightning bolt. I imagine it slithers across the ground in a sharp zigzag pattern rather than a smooth sinusoidal pattern. It would either get along brilliantly with Zigzagoon, or hunt it mercilessly.

For the color pallet of the shiny form, I at first had it colored green like a circuit board with the gold and silver zigzag stripes running down its back like conductive leads. I decided the green was too dark and played around with several different colors before settling on a teal to resemble the turquoise on the original Aztec sculpture. I left the zigzag as gold and silver, and made the fangs gold, to make it seem inlaid with precious metals, if I was going to lean into the decorative statue aesthetic. Gold is also a highly conductive material often used in circuit board design because of its low melting point. Silver is also conductive, but not really used in circuitry – more commonly silver-colored conductors are aluminum, or tin-plated copper. Just a fun fact for ya.

Omehuattl Name Inspiration: Dude there are so many meanings tied up in this name. It's pronounced “Oh-meh-watt” Ome: Nahuatl word for “two” Ohm: Unit of electrical resistance Nahuatl: The Aztec/Mexica language Watt: Unit of electrical power Coatl: Nahuatl word for both “snake” and “twins”