Single post in Proposal to Rename Albino and Melanistic Pokemon
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QUOTE originally posted by goovat
despite my gripes with the terminology i do believe it would be better to keep them as is (albino and melanistic, respectively) because i feel it is much easier to grasp the rarity and value of an albino when it is termed as such, people know albinism is very unusual. "pastel" feels cheap, and the only mirrored term i can see it having is "grunge" which makes me wince a little. a lot of the proposed terms feel obtuse, if that at all makes sense, how do you explain Stygian or Empyrean in a drop-down without essentially describing melanism? anyone can google a melanistic animal and see how the creative work on here is derivative of it and understand this.
i truly do not think the more fantastical terms would be widely appreciated, nor would the change catch on—i would still refer to them as they once were and i think many others would do the same whether out of familiarity or defiance. besides, what becomes of the abbreviations for the site's code? writing (A) and (M) to denote their characteristics is standard. that is a very minor gripe, please do not think too strongly on it but i find the concept of hundreds of pages suddenly collapsing from incompatible bbcode both funny and grimace-inducing, it's not so much fixing a Wishing Stone item bracket as it is having to sit down and vet miles of shiny hunt stats just to return a page to a readable state.
in the end i think it is a non-issue, and unless the two chosen terms can be considered "mirrors" of each other like albinism and melanism AND successfully carry with them the understanding that they are an incredible rarity just like their real-world counterparts, i would strongly advise against the renaming of albino and melanistics.
EDIT, since Cele posted while I was typing! Wow that's really interesting! ;o; I had no idea that the 'evil' association was a Westernization. Still, I feel that it'd just end up with a lot of 'ooo look at the death themed pokemon'. That's just my 10 cents though - and I have been playing too much Warcraft:Shadowlands so the Stygian = Death theme is very much on my mind atm since it's used there xD;;; End of Edit
An idea, perhaps, would be that instead of renaming the colours - perhaps take the text at the top of the albino page where it explains what they are - and make it a big page on it's own of what they (and melans) are on PFQ/New. Then if anyone complains, people can just link them to that page.