“Aspire to be who you want to be” as a theme for my first Heartgold playthrough

I was looking for a theme for naming my pokemon in my first Heartgold playthrough and stumbled on a bigger theme and even a side quest.

The theme came to me when I thought that, like humans, pokemon must admire and aspire to be like others too. And what if my trainer encouraged that in her own pokemon. It started with letting them choose their names. A mix of their own pokemon name and the name of the pokemon they would want to be. But evolved into her helping them dress up for the part too. And we drawing them dressed up.

Stop here if you want to guess who the pokemon want to be first (SPOILERS ahead)

First up I wanted Lyra to embody the theme as well, so I gave her Claire as an inspiration.

My starter totodile was a match made in heaven when I spun a random generator for Water type pokemon. So meet Totodeon, who admires Vaporeon.

Next I caught a sentret that I had a great idea for before I even caught them. This is Sentle, a big Smeargle fan.

My hoppip became Sunpip naturally. Aspiring to one day be a Sunflora.

Mareep was a wild one, but after checking out all the Electric types for gens 1 & 2, at the bottom was the perfect match. Markou looks up to Raikou.

And the zubat I caught, well they are wanting some more colour. Inspired by Dustox, they became Zutox.

If you want to follow more of my playthrough, let me know. Or if you want to know more about my process, or the background on the costumes ect…

I'd love to share more of it with you here.