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Without context, this sudden outburst of trans-supportive Amoonguss memes seems very odd, but the story behind it is both frustrating and somewhat interesting. It’s also filled with plenty of drama, which is typical of these kinds of things, but we’ll start with the basics and work our way to the memes.
The drama that spawned these memes focuses on a competitive Pokémon player called Neil Patel. Patel, age 21, has been around for a little while now, and has performed pretty well in a lot of competitions, often placing in the top 16 or top 8. He was also generally well liked, had a pretty solid following on YouTube, Twitter, and Patreon, and was mostly respected by other Pokémon players.
That reputation was knocked a little bit last year, when Patel is said to have entered an online competition – one that wasn’t officially sponsored by The Pokémon Company – posing as a 16-year-old girl, something Patel has admitted to on Twitter. He got through it mostly unscathed, though, until yesterday.
A Twitter account by the name of kunal, using the handle shadekirby321, shared a screenshot on Twitter purporting to show a message sent from Patel’s account on Discord. In it, Patel says that he “support [sic] gay and lesbian,” but that he will never support people changing their gender, saying that it was his opinion that it was “mental illness,” something which is categorically false and unsupported by any psychological study or medical body.
Following kunal’s tweet, Patel posted a tweet saying that he was leaving YouTube and Pokémon, saying he deserved “no place in this community”. This was shortly after having just faced off against former world champion Wolfe Glick at the finals of the Orlando Regional Championships, and that’s where the memes come into play.
During that competition, and in Patel’s match against Glick, the latter used an Amoonguss, and since Glick ended up winning the match – the Amoonguss was the one of the last Pokémon left on the field at the end of the match, and dealt the final blow – people have rallied around that Amoonguss for defeating a player who used transphobic language. And thus, the legend of the trans ally Amoonguss was born.
Despite the messy leadup to this, there has actually been an outpouring of support for trans Pokémon players since kunal’s screenshot was posted. Players from across the globe have shown their support for trans players, encouraging them to continue competing in VGC events, and offering help for potential new players to learn their way around the community and around the competitive scene. It may have come from a gross place to begin with, but the outpouring after the fact, and the huge amount of trans-supportive Amoonguss tweets that came with it, has been absolutely lovely to see.
How a Mushroom Pokémon Became a Trans Icon
If you’re a big Twitter user like I am, and you follow a few competitive Pokémon accounts – or Twitter’s algorithm decided you needed to see competitive Pokémon accounts – then you might have seen some curious memes popping up in the last couple of days. They’re mostly focused on Amoonguss, a mushroom Pokémon that has seen a lot of use historically, and its apparent support of trans rights.Without context, this sudden outburst of trans-supportive Amoonguss memes seems very odd, but the story behind it is both frustrating and somewhat interesting. It’s also filled with plenty of drama, which is typical of these kinds of things, but we’ll start with the basics and work our way to the memes.
The drama that spawned these memes focuses on a competitive Pokémon player called Neil Patel. Patel, age 21, has been around for a little while now, and has performed pretty well in a lot of competitions, often placing in the top 16 or top 8. He was also generally well liked, had a pretty solid following on YouTube, Twitter, and Patreon, and was mostly respected by other Pokémon players.
That reputation was knocked a little bit last year, when Patel is said to have entered an online competition – one that wasn’t officially sponsored by The Pokémon Company – posing as a 16-year-old girl, something Patel has admitted to on Twitter. He got through it mostly unscathed, though, until yesterday.
A Twitter account by the name of kunal, using the handle shadekirby321, shared a screenshot on Twitter purporting to show a message sent from Patel’s account on Discord. In it, Patel says that he “support [sic] gay and lesbian,” but that he will never support people changing their gender, saying that it was his opinion that it was “mental illness,” something which is categorically false and unsupported by any psychological study or medical body.
Following kunal’s tweet, Patel posted a tweet saying that he was leaving YouTube and Pokémon, saying he deserved “no place in this community”. This was shortly after having just faced off against former world champion Wolfe Glick at the finals of the Orlando Regional Championships, and that’s where the memes come into play.
During that competition, and in Patel’s match against Glick, the latter used an Amoonguss, and since Glick ended up winning the match – the Amoonguss was the one of the last Pokémon left on the field at the end of the match, and dealt the final blow – people have rallied around that Amoonguss for defeating a player who used transphobic language. And thus, the legend of the trans ally Amoonguss was born.
Despite the messy leadup to this, there has actually been an outpouring of support for trans Pokémon players since kunal’s screenshot was posted. Players from across the globe have shown their support for trans players, encouraging them to continue competing in VGC events, and offering help for potential new players to learn their way around the community and around the competitive scene. It may have come from a gross place to begin with, but the outpouring after the fact, and the huge amount of trans-supportive Amoonguss tweets that came with it, has been absolutely lovely to see.
