Jynx... stands for Jynx! Durr.

124: Jynx

So, gonna go ahead and get the "oof" part out of the way first before talking about Jynx's actual design...

For however many didn't know, THIS is what Jynx used to look like back in Gen 1. While likely not done with intended malice, whether this blackness is meant to be a void that a face is peeking out from or its actual skin color, Jynx is very uncomfortably similar to a racist caricature of black people. Understandably, people got upset about the way Jynx is portrayed so they quickly changed Jynx to have a purple face that is more obviously her skin than this extremely yikesy misstep.

A lot of fans like to go up to bat for this by saying Jynx is meant to be based on the yokai Yama-uba, supposedly a snow-maiden that lives in the mountains and has skin blackened by frostbite. Except that last part is wrong, because there are no depictions of the Yama-uba with black, frostbitten skin, that just seems to be something fans made up to try and defend Jynx. It's easier to just accept Pokemon did a huge fuck-up and did what they could to mend it without changing Jynx completely. I don't think the purple skin is the perfect fix either, but it's certainly a lot better than. That.

As for Jynx as we know it today, I still to this day feel it's a little too uncomfortably close to resembling a human, and just flat-out having a dress on is a bit much. The beta leaks of Gen 1 suggest Jynx was at one point going to be a simple Yeti creature, and I think that angle could've worked better had they just made her huge and covered in her own hair, to a point where it looks like she's wearing a shaggy dress anyways.

And for the longest time I never noticed those weird spikes on the side of her, but now that I have I can't stop looking at them. What are they, exactly? It doesn't help that I first noticed them in Pokemon Go, so I was convinced it was a glitch, but turns out no! They've just always been there and they just look uncomfortable and weird! And not in any fun way, just in a "make me think the model is broken" kind of way.

AND she's gonna be the first of many female-only Pokemon that are rather blunt with their femininity. It feels odd coming from the same series that allows female Machamp or male Gardevoir, but Jynx among others just cross the line or something. Maybe it's my enby transness showing I just tend to side-eye these designs that are gender-exclusive while having designs that heavily reinforce gender stereotypes like how the Hitmons are so manly or Tsareena is so girly. Even if we ignore that animals don't function this way at all, (yes there's gender differences in a lot of species but almost none of them abide my human standards of gender presentation) it's just so silly to stick almost every Pokemon with a dress with a 100% female gender ratio. Dudes can wear dresses too, y'know.

Anyway, it almost feels like "The Groke" from the Swedish cartoon Moomins is the ideal would-be Jynx for me. She's an odd mountain creature not too dissimilar to a yeti, who while having the faintest hint of femininity to its design with the fur dress, while still not hitting you with a blunt object over it. That and she's weird while still being oddly cute. Totally would've been a Pokemon I'd put on a team if I needed an ice type!