Copying from another thread
>bird>buckleBased on the Jian, the one-winged bird of Chinese mythology that cannot fly until it finds a mate, at which point they can only fly together.
from wikipedia:
>There are supposed to be the Jiān (鶼; jian1): the mythical one-eyed bird with one wing; Jianjian (鶼鶼): a pair of such birds dependent on each other, inseparable, hence representing husband and wife.The first stage would be steel type (considering a metal buckle) and would have a gender difference where males would have only right wings and females would have only left wings.
The second and final stage would be a proper jianjian with Steel/Flying typing (since it can now fly).
Design would be like a generic metal bird with a big buckle on the non-wing side where it can attach for its evolution.
Not sure how the gendered thing would work with its evolution. It's evolution is supposed to represent it finding a mate, so maybe its preevo has gender while the evolution is genderless? In-lore, things like Attract not working could have a nod to the birds loving each other too much for infidelity. It could take up two spots in the daycare and produce eggs without another pokemon.
Going back to the design, maybe it could be designed like a lovebird. Give it a broken heart motif in the preevo forming a complete heart in the evolution. Make it drab-colored in the preevo and lovebird colorful in the evolution. You could make the preevo even more sad-looking if you go closer to the original mythology and give it one leg and one eye.
I'm really liking this concept.
Any ideas for how it would evolve? I know that location-based evolutions are annoying, but if it were purely based on level, that'd be like it finding a mate in the middle of a volcano or gym or whatever. Maybe it could be something like "level up with another <preevo name> of opposite gender in the party", but that would effectively delete the other pokemon, kind of like a reverse Ninjask/Shedinja situation.
