My favorite Pokémon is Charizard, before you start calling me a genwunner, normalfag or whatever, please consider taking few minutes to read my arguments.

I didn't play the first 2 Pokémon generations on their release years, I was introduced to the franchise through the anime, back in 1999/2000 when I was 4 years old. I really liked watching it and my favorite Pokémon was, of course, Charizard. Why? Simply because it was the strong badass looking Pokémon who could destroy everything without even following its trainer orders. As a kid, watching that gave me an amazing feeling that I can't explain now. I played every Pokémon game to date and watched most of the anime, and even though there are a lot of really cool Pokémon, none of them could give me that feeling Charizard did, hence why it stays as my favorite after so many years.

But this became a problem, I couldn't even post or talk about it in a favorite Pokémon thread because others were insulting and going against me. This made me really sad and damaged me psychologically, til the point I started fooling myself, making me believe my favorite Pokémon wasn't Charizard and changing it.

I changed it multiple times because of this. It was cool to talk about my "favorites" without getting insulted, but something felt empty. I knew these Pokémon weren't actually my favorite.
It took me YEARS to fix the damage the Pokémon community caused in me. But I finally managed to accept Charizard is my favorite, despite what others think.

I'm posting this because I see constant toxicity in this community and it's depressing, do you even remember what Pokémon is all about? Friendship, bondings, helping each other to reach goals... But now all I see is hate. Please reconsider the way you act, because you may be hurting someone with it, there's no reason to insult people for their preferences, no reason to try to make others like the same thing as you.

My favorite Pokémon is Charizard, and I'm proud of it.