>>55428417Funny, I remember coming up with a very similar breakdown myself years ago, though I never posted it anywhere.
>Categorical (defines a Pokemon's physical/biological form)>Elemental (defines a Pokemon's elemental affinity and innate special skills)>Alignment (defines a Pokemon's personality or chosen/preferred mode of combat)Main differences are that I put flying in species/categorical rather than elemental (but it could go either way depending on if you see it as "bird" or "air" type) and fairy in combat/alignment rather than species (because fairies are all over the place, either being biologically fairies, having some sort of mystical fairy power, or simply being cutesy), but a lot of what you and I observed was the same.
Putting all this together, I came up with this diagram. Just to explain some of my logic here:
>normal is between species and style because the type is either given to basic animals/mammals (Raticate), or to denote how plain/neutral/adaptable something is (Arceus)>reptiles/fish/birds/plants are commonly portrayed as dragon/water/flying/grass (Dragonite, Seaking, Starly, Oddish), or can sometimes just be creatures that embody or wield that type as an element (Regidrago, Aqua Breed Tauros, Tornadus, Meowscarada)>psychic is either a special telekinetic power the user wields by virtue of being a magical creature (Reuniclus), or a sharpened mind or sixth sense honed through discipline and training (Medicham), while steel types are either steel-infused creatures (Aggron) or wield metal as a weapon (Tinkaton)>as mentioned before, fairy is kind of a "just fuck my shit up senpai" type>while you could argue that some types, like ground/rock/fire, could be in categorical, as there are some Pokemon that are just living masses of sand/rocks/lava, I made the distinction based on what seemed the most like diverse taxonomic families, while keeping those more "traditional RPG monster trope" concepts in the realm of elementalThoughts?
