>>57508061It became a meme because of Phos, and one time people started drawing their characters in crop tops. Me included.
As I write this Ceniza thing and come up with her lore and backstory in a detailed way, I can only remember just how many missed opportunities Game Freak had with cultural representation in Paldea. Spain isn’t like Hawaii, a very popular tourist destination for Japanese travellers, or the UK, where the game’s art director was born there, and it shows. They picked Spain because it’s a great place to use for your open world game — we have beaches, plains, forests, caves, cities, mountains, snow… well, maybe not bamboo forests. Honestly, why is there a random bamboo forest in that one place? Who put that there?
I also suspect that Spain’s lack of (widely known) distinct mythology aside from Catholicism is another contributing factor. Alola has a lot of Polynesian mythology thrown in with the inspirations for the Tapus, Galar has Arthurian myths for the doggos (would’ve been cool if we got a trio of lesser weapon dogs to make a kind of Round Table, desu)… we don’t really have that, historically. We were Roman once, which is probably gonna be used for an Italy region, we were half Muslim once, which would probably be saved for a more Middle Eastern region… and Christianity is a bit of a weird topic for them, I assume. Arceus exists, but the Spanish brand of Catholicism is very peculiar. I understand why they didn’t look into it.
STILL THEY SHOULD’VE CONSULTED *ME* AND HAD *ME* TELL THEM WHAT TO DO
There was a time where I had a fangame concept, years before SV. It had the Inquisition as bad guys and desu if I recontextualised it is some kind of Legends game concept it could be kinda cool, but that’s not exactly OC stuff anymore, is it?
All that said, I still love SV for what it is, all things considered.
Rant over. Time to write a little bit more, maybe, and sleep.
