>>31962798It wasn't brought up until now, by you.
I think there's a difference between looking like different animals while still keeping the same thematic concept (another Pokemon line like this is Remoraid/Octillery, and people still get triggered as fuck over these two even though everybody gets the gun/cannon joke by now), and looking like the same species but having different visual themes.
Overall, the Rowlet line retains its archery/dart-throwing concept throughout all of its stages, even if Dartrix being a sissy boy is a red herring. And every stage of the family is clearly an owl, while the 'wotts are so stylistically different that people think they're different animals.
You might be able to say that Dartrix's personality changes when it evolves, like how Wimpod grows out of its wimpiness when it evolves into Golisopod (Emergency Exit merely being GF's way to retain its gimmick while trying to get rid of the wimp connotations).
Or, if you take the Rowlet line as a Robin Hood reference, it literally goes "from the rich (Dartrix) to the poor (Decidueye/Robin Hood)". I know that's a stretch, but a lot of people have speculated it, so it's worth bringing up.
And if none of those points work for you, then it could just be GF trolling people and trying to make the final starter forms "surprises", like Chesnaught and Greninja doing U-Turns or outright defying their base stages. (Becomes fat, then fit again/Bubbles discarded for tongue scarf)
But in the end, I dunno.
