[X][Coordinator]
[X][Explorer]
[X] It feels like a natural consequence. - Nobody seems to question the trainer's bond when it affects the pokemon, so it only seems fair that it takes effect the other way around as well. If a trainer doesn't want to be more like their pokemon, they probably shouldn't have added them to their team in the first place.
[X][Stick in the Centre]
To moratorium should be up, so here goes.
My interest on the contest route depends a bit on how exactly they work for the context of the quest, but given that this isn't a hard vote, I might as well mark my interest for it. Otherwise I'd be perfectly happy to explore the world. While many of the involved trainers sound interesting, the current gym paradigm doesn't sound like something I'm all that wild about participating in. At least not until we got ourselves a baseline of training and are less squarely in the "get stomped, but maybe receive a pitty badge" territory. Then I'd be up to tip our toes into it.
As for the trainer bond vote, I'm aiming for something along the lines of neutral acceptance. Being all gung ho about how you can benefit from training pokemon seems off to me, but a symbiotic relationship were both sides make each other better does feel like that's a good way for things to be.
And as for my updated thoughs about themes, honestly, surprisingly little has changed for such a reveal. Like, having such a big decision tie into the protagonist's personality is kind of a "no duh" moment. The fact that there's somewhat of a mechanical incentive there is secondary. The one big difference is where exactly the attention for narrowing down the focus of a theme should be.
On which note, I somewhat amused by how close we ended up to Jasmine on sheer coincidence, what with picking a mareep as our starter that has a strongly developed magnetic sense and right down to picking a trainer archetype more inclined towards defense. Stumbling across the spear counterpart of her best friend is oddly in line for Melati. It's a comparison I'm not exactly opposed to leaning into either, given that zone control is a theme I've been eyeing for a while, albeit with more of a focus on the control aspect in general, rather than playing into the defense angle. As mentioned before, it does play pretty nicely into his reaction to named pokemon and how they seem to bend the world around them.
On the other hand, I'm growing more opposed to just a cute/fluff theme, given that Joan pretty specifically already has image problems. That does still leave room for more of a theme that basically takes cute pokemon and toughens them up in one way or another, but it'll definetly take more than just something cute for it to click with his character for me. Even then though, being around that many pokemon innitially defined by their cuteness sounds like it'd make Joan' situation much worse before it gets better. Afterall this is as much about the pokemon changing the trainer as it is about the trainer changing them. Picking up pokemon defined by a trait you don't want sounds like it could have nasty consequences.
The big question ultimately though is what kind of character we want to shape Joan into. I have no interest in getting Joan the kind of pompus ego now rightfully associated with dragon trainers, so the dragonborn theme for example is pretty much dead to me. Likewise, I don't really want his complex to be the driving force that compells him either. That is to say I'd rather have him find a way to stand on his own then potentially gravitate towards incorporating cute/fluffy pokemon as appropriate, rather than shaping his entire lifestyle around living vicariously through pokemon he wants to push into a paticular niche.
