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Friday, September 2, 2022

Gross Grifter Grafaiai

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Ew. You're telling me people like this thing?

Yesterday, a photographer published his findings of a new Paldean Pokémon named Grafaiai. It eats berries and then uses its middle finger covered in its own poisonous saliva to paint graffiti on trees (and this is how it claims territory), with the colour of the graffiti being based on the berries it just ate. There is then another, more traditional video showing Grafaiai. I suggest watching this video with the audio muted, because Grafaiai's cry is ear-splitting and uncomfortable.



Grafaiai is the Toxic Monkey Pokémon that is a Poison/Normal type—a new type combination, though it's basically a worse Poison type that trades a Fighting resistance for a Ghost immunity, which I don't think is a good trade. It has the Unburden ability, or it could have the Poison Touch ability. It's allegedly nocturnal, though the video above is clearly in daylight and it's not sleeping. Also in that video, when it spits out poison, it can turn invisible mid-air before harming its victim. (Alternatively, Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet have bad move animations.) It's apparently based on the aye-aye, an animal native to Madagascar that has a threatened conservation status that I've never heard of. While the aye-aye is an ugly creature, it's not as ugly as Grafaiai is:

Aye-aye Grafaiai at night side-by-side comparison lemur Pokémon
Left: An aye-aye photographed at night by Frank Vassen under the CC BY 2.0 licence.
Right: Grafaiai.


Sure, both Grafaiai and aye-aye have weird fingers and big ears. But Grafaiai's eyes are original, and I don't just mean aiai vs. aye-aye with the eyes. (Say that sentence out loud.) Grafaiai's eyes make it look like a big green-eyed alien, or at least a super-gross bug. But Grafaiai is supposed to be a lemur, and isn't a bug type. Its design doesn't convey that at all (unlike the original aye-aye). Passimian is definitely a lemur. Grafaiai is a freak of nature and doesn't belong with polite, aesthetically pleasing, beloved Pokémon.

Which goes into my next point. When Grafaiai was first shown with how it paints its territorial symbol where it's not wanted, some of the freaks of nature—also known as social media-using queers—claimed Grafaiai for themselves because its limited artistic ability resembles the crowning achievement of their community's creative output—stripe-based pride flags. Any artwork with colour and stripes must be a code of solidarity to them, apparently! So they think Grafaiai, like themselves, makes the world a worse place by vandalising normal spaces by making them prideful. They're already making “polysexual ocs” of Grafaiai. Some even believe it to be a cute and lovable creature.

If they want to claim Grafaiai, I say let them—though no one has asked Grafaiai how it feels about this. Grafaiai might enjoy it and profit off of it, or it might dislike the attention because it specifically avoids packs, which these sexual identitarians would qualify as. I think they're doing themselves a disservice (most LGB aren't ugly, or at least not to the degree Grafaiai is) in doing so, but I don't want to see that thing around. It probably has bad stats anyway and no redeemable qualities.



Ludwig repeatedly kept trying to write “Grafaifai” or “Graifaiai” as he was writing this article. Let's hope none of that slipped into the final product. If you can't tell, he really dislikes Grafaiai based on its visual design, on top of not liking the games it's going to feature in to begin with. But what do you think?


Cyclizar was the previously newly discovered Pokémon.

6 comments :

  1. Dude it's spider monkey from Ben 10

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Even Spidermonkey looks better. Sure, it has more eyes, but they're smaller.

      Delete
  2. My reaction, upon my friend who is really into Pokemon telling me about this, was "meh." He thinks they're set up as some kind of rival/natural enemy of Smeargle, which is at least a little interesting to think about though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think two Pokémon that can paint things can co-exist on the planet without having to be enemies or even interact with one another!

      Delete
    2. wtf I never replied to this???

      Yeah, I doubt this will happen.

      Delete
    3. wtf someone or something marked my Sept 3 comment as spam that's why it wasn't there.

      Delete

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