>>53563261>toedscool being more of a distinct looking mushroom mon before evolving to slowly adopt more traits of the tentacool lineThis is exactly what I had in mind when you described it, and my sentiment remains the same. My problem with this idea is implying that the Pokemon would end up converging on these traits (which implies actual evolution), but ONLY in the secondary stage (which is tying it to evolution in Pokemon's terms). What I mean by "muddied the concept" is that these two are distinctly separated in pretty much every instance, to the point where an Aether Foundation employee in Gen 7 laid out the differences plain as day so there wasn't any confusion between the two. This just mashes both in a way that feels distinctly sloppy, like they wouldn't have wanted to commit to either approach.
>the resemblance is much more than just superficialHow so? Genuinely, I'm wondering what, aesthetically, do they share past general silhouette? They act differently the in the wild, live in wildly different biomes have different battle animations, etc. etc. Their stats could've used more separation for sure, but I think otherwise they play on the "like these Pokemon at a glance, but entirely different on a further look" concept quite well.
>take on a form more akin to jellicent upon evolving,It looks like the tenta line in the first place because it uses it's mycelium similarly to how they use their tentacles (wrap them around prey to then incapacitate them), which Jellicent doesn't do. Same for the Wiglett line, they have their big noses explicitly because they needed a way to detect threats from long distance given the speed of their predators, it's not JUST burrowing (which is perfectly capture by the Dugtrio similarity anyways, given they're described as strong and fast in that regard). Introducing more traits from other mons that're tangentially related at best feels like, as said before, muddying the concept.
