>>32262801In Venusaur's case, most Gen I fans are genwunners to some extent, and therefore unironically love Charizard and are responsible for its hype backlash in the first place. A trend I noticed is that fans of other generations (especially Unovabortions) are the ones who prefer Venusaur.
In Feraligatr's case, it and Typhlosion seem to get a lot of love from Johtoddlers, and neither of them is insanely hyped by GF or the general fanbase, so contrarian hipsters have no problem latching onto them (and, in some cases, claiming the Johto starters are the best in the series because it's socially unacceptable to claim that the Unova ones are).
>>32262828None of the Pokémon games are "bad", not even XY. The fanbase just inflates the relative perceived quality of each game to claim that some are masterpieces (i.e. the ones they grew up with) and some are absolute garbage (i.e. the ones most dissimilar to what they grew up with).
