#like brood parasitism

[poyameows]

After listening to the newest tmagp episode I have one theory about the baby. I was thinking about changelings in Irish mythology and how a baby would be swapped at birth with a faerie as some cases believe a human mothers milk is needed for the baby to survive. Especially with the 'health visitor' monitoring her the whole time. Since the demon baby seems to resemble a vampire, I was thinking maybe Patricia did originally have a human child which was then swapped for a vampire baby. I can't remember the exact way vampires are born/made in tma so this might be slightly off. But since the baby is mentioned to be eating the mother, it seems likely it's in an attempt to get blood which adult? vampires wouldn't be able to provide. If the baby was swapped at birth it would also fit in with the equivalent exchange narrative that has been prevalent for a while. :)

[otiksimr]

Some Yveltal sketches (curated from my main blog, there's some lore in the tags if you're interested.)

[hoofpeet]

Okay after some consideration I think togekiss is a good pokemon to parasitize !! Reasons being

-they're fairly rare, which leads me to believe they have small broods that wouldn't provide much competition

-Togekiss are also very friendly and probably wouldn't reject a parasitic murkrow even if they did notice

-Obvious fairy type tie-in

The only initial drawback I saw was that the togetic line has 3 evolutionary stages while murkrows only have 2; but upon further consideration that might actually trick parent togekiss into thinking the murkrow is just a runt that needs to be fed more to grow stronger? So uhm . brood parasite murkrow/honchrow variant because I think brood parasitism is cool !!

[ranticore]

Are the "hand" harpies also part of the original cursed Monsters/Humans or are they some sort of convergent evolution?? Whats their deal??

Yep and they are centaurs (we'll use that as the common name for this body plan, technically it includes wyrms too). Some can very neatly hide their hands under plumage or fur and almost blend in (almost) (well maybe)

I like the idea of sort of similar iterations of the same basic concept (human & bird smashed together), as if the original punishments were described by the sentencing judge and then taken away to multiple locations at once to be put into effect, so what you're seeing is really two different interpretations of the same punishment from different geographic locations

The one i drew is a sea eagle type living in the same migratory waterbird flock as rainspell. Their differences are noted but tolerated.

[plasky]

I just had a really dumb character idea

So you know how there's like mimics n stuff to which they transform/mimic and object/thing/person

I then also thought of a cuckoo bird and how it inacts brood parasitism

What if let's say this was translated to a sort of mimic thing where the mimic leaves their child to some random family and the child shifts to look like they belonged to that family although still looking more off/off-putting

The mimic child then causes "accidents" to the rest of the children in the family leaving only them in the end to have all the food and everything they need for themself to live

[abyssalzones]

i can't speak for everyone but i personally LOVE overly ambitious fan content that relies heavily on personal experience. it improves the quality imo, enhances the experience if you will. so much fan content is just retreading what the source material already did and it's like girl if i wanted to see that i would just re-consume the source material. fan content SHOULD be personal imo. it should have heart and do things the source material never would or could. so keep it up 👍 ok thats all

that IS refreshing to hear actually you make a good point. I have a tendency to get self conscious about putting anything I care about into the world, so hearing this means a lot and definitely inspires me to keep going ^_^ thanks for the kind words !!

[froody]

MY 100 BABY CHALLENGE SIM IS UP TO 45 BABIES!!!!

[invidiatechdemo]

Meandering thoughts about Pecharunt/possible ecology Stuff(tm) for the specific one in Mochi Mayhem + more general ideas for if you treat them as a species, since a surprising amount of mythical+legendary pokemon are explicitely /not/ single specimen species, just very rare (Shaymin being mentioned as migrating, Latios and Latias entries mentioning flocks, etc)

Pleeease note I'm going to write a post about this with illustrations/partially in-universe perspective in a bit, but I did want to throw out my initial thoughts!!!

Also, with the exception of the first thing I say, I really encourage people to consider Pecharunt from an ecology perspective in their works alongside like. an individual pokemon with its own backstory, because I think that allows for richer more interesting stories! I think if you like Pecharunt and want to attack me with rocks for saying what I'm about to say, please feel free to write your own meta/opinions in your own post, because I also really like Pecharunt and would like to see more stuff written about it as an inidividual animal and also as a theoretical species. I think it's very cute. ^_^

Also I will note that this is steam of conscious style stuff; I may restate my points multiple times, sorry about that!

With that out of the way, let's look at the scarlet and violet website's entry.

The one that has people fighting about this thing's malice or lack thereof.

'Uses Its Cunning To Survive' is a very evocative phrasing.

That line being so carefully combined with Pecharunt being described as 'sly' and doing actions such as pretending to be a baby Pokemon a la Happiny to gain sympathy, and possibly specifically mimicking /human/ kids in vocalization/etc depending on the tone you read it in... that is a very specific sort of evolutionary strategy that this calls to mind.

The information provided on this page, combined with the fact it apparently was living with an old couple, and the fact that in the story of Momotaro, the couple found the child in a peach floating down the river, and decided to raise the child as their own...

...Game Freak accidentally made a Mythical that is a brood parasite.

This probably sounds like I'm jumping to conclusions, but there's a couple other things that make me think that this is a reasonable conclusion about how a young instance of Pecharunt works.

To explain why, let's look at Pecharunt's movelist, and specifically its egg moves! Also, a quick review of what 'Brood Parasite' means.

Brood parasitism as an evolutionary strategy comes about since raising young takes a lot of time and effort; in the more standard usecases, like in birds, this tends towards an egg being placed in the nest, and the hatching animal outcompeting the host bird's actual young by crying louder and more consistently, or pushing them out of the nest to obtain more resources/attention.

Much like Pecharunt, this may seem baffling at first (in cuckoo bird's case, because of the size disparity, and in Pecharunt's case, the Base Stat Total disparity)

This is not always the case, mind; Asian Koels tend to not push other young out the nest (though they still do it Sometimes), and the Black-headed duck is notable for having an extremely extended incubation time in which after that point the duck hatches and wanders off.

'But Pecharunt is a mythical, does it really need that much protection?' Well, lets look at a couple facts you may or may not already know. Here are Pecharunt's egg moves:

Pecharunt at level one has extremely weak moves, and to make matters worse, Pecharunt is in one of the slowest exp gain groupings. Even worse, it learns new moves every eight levels when a lot of pokemon are getting new stuff to learn every four, and does not get a lot of good coverage moves at that!

To put it in even further context, Pecharunt learns Malignant Chain, its signature move and the one that specifically utilizes binding mochi in a more aggressive fashion than the firing mochi/serving mochi seen in game events and youtube video stuff, at level 48.

With that in mind, its growth rate seems to be in a similar range as something like the dragons.

A lot of Dark types, one of the things that Pecharunt is weak to, specifically exist in packs, which would leave smaller less experienced instances profoundly vulnerable. To add on this this, the areas I've been suspecting for original range + what in birdwatching stuff is termed as vagrancy (animal appearing way way outside of normal range) all don't just have Dark types, but in many cases /multiple/ species of Dark types. Poochyena, Houndour, Bisharp... all of these are dark types that live in packs or large groups. Even more notably, Poochyena and Mightyena in the wild have a chance of carrying Pecha Berries, which cure poison. Isn't that something.

These same evolutionary pressures could very reasonably result in Pecharunt's comically high defense! Mightyena and Poochyena are physical attackers, and a lot of the Dark moves Houndour and Doom learn by level up are physical.

On that note: Special Defense notably is /not/ Pecharunt's strong suit, and the weakness to Psychic means that any sufficiently nasty special attacker could rip through the lower hp pool hiding behind the physical defense like wet tissue paper. I'm going to specifically point at Beldum and Metagross and then smile serenely. Steel types in general would be a problem if in a sitation where its unable to utilize mochi properly. Which is where the 'subjugation pokemon' aspect, and its ecological strategy after its lengthy maturation would come about.

So, if Pecharunt were a species, they'd need a lot of extra care and protection to reach anywhere near maturity/full potential, and specifically that sort of care and protection from something or someone that can handle the things it can't whether that's via a more varied movepool/different typing, or the structures and technology of human beings in the pokemon setting (though in another post I mmmaay get into some thoughts about how if Pecharunt is a species, it probably is in decline in the modern Poke-setting. Stay tuned.)

A limited movepool makes sense if ecology-wise, Pecharunt is a parasite, even if one that is significantly more free-living than the ones these sort of things usually apply to; trait loss is pretty common with parasites as stuff gets delegated to hosts/host species. This is a Pokemon that doesn't need to have type coverage because its own ecology is based around commanding other Pokémon that do have the correct type coverage to defend it.

And since that's covered with Binding Mochi, all that it needs to be good at is the things that its movepool is geared towards; manipulating people and Pokémon to protect itself, giving pause and sympathy without the use of poison when it can't directly manipulate something, running away when /that/ fails utilizing Astonish to make a target flinch when alone and Parting Shot when with a retainer/bodyguard, and then finally as a last resort when an old enough/high enough level, the arsenal of extremely powerful non-mochi poison type moves, Malignant Chain, and Shadow Ball... so, the exact sort of actions that Pecharunt one for one takes in Mochi Mayhem.

It even specifically attempts to flee after Arven and Penny are defeated, which lines up nicely with the possible usecase for Parting Shot!

Prior to learning Shadow Ball and Malignant Chain, It has a TON of moves that specifically take it out of the fight and put another Pokemon into the fight with advantages, like Memento and Parting Shot. This, in my opinion, gives credence to this being the in-universe reasoning for the movepool being what it is.

Memento in /particular/ being a move that goes so far as to risk fainting is uh. Interesting, especially since it's one of the moves learned at level 1!

Oh and speaking about its level one/egg moves: on the topic of Astonish!

I think that move reflects something really fun about the peach pit motif. Which is that I think the glowing interiors of the shell serve similar purposes to the false eyes on irl moths + also the pokemon Masquerain (who also learns astonish famously!) Imo, the false eye flashing analogue feels like a really easy pull to make.

A less move-oriented view of this is also kind of established in the scene with Arven and Penny!

This Pokemon tends to keep the shell closed outside of battle and certain interactions, and the scene specifically uses the kind of duller, slow moving animations for the closed form and then has them launch into the mochi thing, utilizing startle response/reflexive action to advantage, comedic as it is.

The mochi throwing also works really well as a two birds one stone defense measure for Pecharunt ecology-wise, as similar 'throw food that was being eaten in hopes predatory animals will give up chase to eat that' is actually pretty common, and hell, Legends Arceus has shown that bean cakes and muffins work very well against many pokemon.

You may ask, 'Invi, does that mean the shell being fully open for the entire mythical encounter fight mean they're puffing themself out like a cat as an agonistic display for the entire duration of the fight?'

And to that I say...Quite possibly! Other instances of Pecharunt in the story showing itself probably land more into deimatic displays/startle displays like those used by butterflies and stick insects, but the fight instance probably specifically is agonistic, considering it starts making aggressive hissing 'chhhrah' noises, especially in contact with the Loyal Three.

As for the Binding Mochi from an ecology perspective/real life analogue... there's no completely direct analogue irl, but it serves two purposes that are very much common strategies!

What Pecharunt did by making the Loyal Three retainers + what it did to Mossui Town is a pretty open and shut example of bodyguard manipulation.

This is something more commonly seen in parasitoid species, but essentially, this is a subsection of behavior altering in parasites where you get your host to do stuff for you to keep you safe. Examples in our real world include wasp species that get caterpillars thrash if potential predators get too close.

In the Pokemon world, the go-to example would be Nihilego, whose venom has some similarities to Binding Mochi, but is noted as specifically messing with someone's preexisting abilities and impulses, while Pecharunt's alterations of its retainers tend to fall in line with their desires/wishes.

As for the fact it's a food item that gets other things to defend it, that's also common! Aphids and scale insects commonly produce honeydew, and get ants to defend them from predators in return for such.

As for it being mochi? The concept of something along those lines being produced as a starchy thing is also not that far out, as a number of psyllid bugs produce Lerps, which consist of sugars and starches. In the case of the bell lerp, which actually utilizes a bird, the Bell Miner, to avoid being attacked by other fauna and flora in return for continued consumption of aforementioned lerps!

I've focused on the brood parasite section, but overall I will say that after hitting Malignant Chain, it likely becomes a social parasite a la certain types of cuckoo bees, and these would essentially intergrade nicely (can start more actively controlling pokemon/people it's with already, move around more freely than the initially probably very nest-centralized movement to keep itself safe until its defenses can develop more properly).

Misc additional notes:

Interestingly enough, while Pecharunt has the 'no eggs discovered' thing, it does have a set amount of time to hatch in game data and it is specifically way shorter than most other Legendaries/Mythicals minus a couple notable exceptions like Terapagos and the guardian deities; Pecharunt's starts at 20, which is the same as eggs for starters like Bulbasaur and etc.

Like for context, most of the other guys have egg cycles of 80-120. This would match up to a really common phenomenon in brood parasites where the eggs actively hatch faster than the host animal's to get a leg up on resources and etc.

... I actually have even more thoughts specifically about what Pecharunt's habitat/original home was, and also a couple different theories about what it eats, as well as more granular things about like, physical stuff about this guy's body instead of a life cycle overview, but I'm going to save those for later because this is already ungodly long. Uhhh closing thoughts:

Hold Pecharunt like hamburger, and give it one of every food and drink. It's safe to do this.

[soupy-sez]

Cardinal Feeds Goldfish

[tiny-chubby-bird]

romantic leon.

[atthebell-moved]

phil said something about being good at mimicking earlier and i immediately started brainrotting about mockingbird hardcore!phil

[gamer-paramnesia]

hey guys

if elquackity does replace quackity can we all agree to draw him as a cuckoo finch? thanks 

[apollodreams]

Thought too hard about it now I'm really upset about cuckoos

[strawberryseamstress]

so the other night i was cooing over tallulah holding the toast on her head and my friend mayli was like ‘but that’s sort of weird, none of the others do that’

today she sent me this screenshot:

which shows that there are things on tallulah’s head because her arms are not where arms usually are

and like

maybe it’s a model limitation from having two things on her head! but dapper’s hat is still bigger and he doesn’t have that

tallulah has a different model. for some reason. probably normal reasons! who’s to say.

(adds tally to ‘evidence tallulah is a brood parasite’ list)

[proton-wobbler]

Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus obscurus)

"Non-binary icon!" (In reference to Roswell from The Adventure Zone)

The topic of brood parasitism is usually brought up with birds such as cowbirds and cuckoos, who's entire mating strategy revolves around parasitizing other birds nets. There is also a type called intra-specific brood parasitism, where birds only lay their eggs in the nests of other birds within their species. Surprisingly, the Vermilion Flycatcher has been shown to have between 9-20% of total offspring raised being the result of brood parasitism! That's a ridiculous amount! The wikipedia article goes into further detail of a 2008 paper, explaining why both females and males seem to be so comfortable with this system:

Females often spend long times away from the nest, which enables others to lay eggs in their nests while absent. This may simply be a form of parasitism, wherein the pair whose nest is being parasitized gains no benefit. But for promiscuous birds, this may provide some genetic fitness. For a male mating with many females, and those females laying many of their eggs outside of their nest, this increases the odds that a promiscuous male's offspring are laid in his nest. This allows the male to outsource the energy-intensive process of egg-laying away from his mate and allows a female to outsource the process of raising her chick. This is supported by examples of males letting females parasitize their nests in exchange for copulation.

Sources:

Image sources: eBird (male - Bradley Hacker); (female - Andrew Newmark)

[zydeco-xylophone]

sometimes an oc idea is just “wouldnt it be fucked up if-?”

tdlr: digidevil ‘raised’ by dolphins

More indepth: currently resides at a marine research facility after refusing to leave a pod member injured by boat propellers. The staff nicknamed the dolphin Enkidu and the digidevil Gilgamesh. Given the state of themself, they have a quite a story to tell. Given that they spent most of their life in complete isolation, communication is difficult to say the least. Attempts at using energy signals to communicate were unsuccessful for both parties. What is known about them is inferred from their physical appearance - clearly stunted growth with no markings to speak of, a body like a crocodilian pretending to be a cetacean, missing tendrils, several bite marks of indeterminate origin, and an unusually worn heartware, theories run abound. Gilga does not give a shit what they think even if it could understand what these weird dryfish are saying. Nowadays they exist as something between a once in a life time case study and a rehabilitation project at the facility. Trying to keep them cared for and the media vultures away is a full time job for the staff. Director’s cut of the lore: It formed out of a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean, as in ‘several weeks away from shore’ kind of ocean. The bodies and wreckage served as its home and meal as it figured out how to hunt in the ocean. Social starvation drove it to seek out life outside its eroding hidey hole. Sharks, whales, and swordfish did not appreciate its presence; but it found luck with a pod of dolphins that tolerated it. From there it learned how to hunt by observing the pod, occasionally eating their scraps and the trash floating on the surface. When trash wasn’t enough, it dived for shipwrecks on the seafloor. It might’ve been made out of the metal of a boat, but oceanic depths take no prisoners. The pressure, coupled with the other dangers of the open ocean, would’ve done it in had they not been scooped up by a marine life rescue ship.