- Iron Moth is meant to resemble a satellite or space telescope (honestly I don't get why Slither Wing is a thing).
Slither Wing is actually based on the female species of some moths (e.g bagworm) iirc, which don’t fly at all - only the males do - a gender diff thing could have been quite interesting with that. Also its underdeveloped wings are reminiscent of Stegosaurus plates, still leaning into an ancient theme, whilst shying away from more popular theropod dinos. I quite like it. Also yeah had no idea Jugulis’ heads were unattached until it was mentiknrd in this thread..
The thing Slither Wing brings to mind for me is how Larvesta was a very Physically oriented Pokemon before evolving into the Specially-inclined Volcarona, to the point that despite its "weakling to reward with evolution" statline, its ATK is 20 points higher than Volcarona's Physical stats. If not for the Paradox concept, I could totally see Slither Wing as a branched evolution (Gender based like Gallade or otherwise) to Volcarona, and narratively I think it's interesting as divergent "real" evolution for Larvesta, becoming more physically powerful and land-bound rather than flying like Volc does.
I think the thing that bothers me is that Slither Wing is a better counterpart to Volcarona itself than to Iron Moth, who also kind of feels redundant as a Volc Paradox since its stats are kind of oriented the same way, and I believe Volcarona is the only Mon with 2 counterparts besides Donphan, since Tusk/Treads are Version-difference bosses. I'm also just biased because SW is currently my favorite Pokemon (subject to change because I go through Autism-like "fleeting obsessions" for some topics, but Volc was already big before) so I might argue for it more than most.
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As a small extra thing I like, Walking Wake is a concept I really like seeing from a gameplay standpoint, debates about its competitive healthiness in Singles aside. The idea of "actively make a Water Type that is viable and strong under Sun, the anti-Water weather" sounds like something straight out of a fan "Create-A-Pokemon" project or Theorymon project here on our own forums. It's realized amazingly well with one move bringing the whole kit together, a Pokemon where the strength is the sum of its parts instead of jacking every powerful aspect to 11 (Zacian, Palafin, Chi-Yu, and Mega Salamence come to mind as examples of that criticism). Even if Walking Wake is too strong, it's from using everything it's allotted in tandem rather than going all in one big number alone.
Besides that I'm also a sucker for weird contradictory/anti-meta Strats being made to work conceptually, with stuff like the Offensively-statted Starmie being a member of bulky cores, or this one Rain Volcarona set I saw in Gen 5 (100% Hurricane to work off boosts and break Bulky Grass targets while still roasting Ferrothorn even with the reduction), thinking outside the box and making it work, so now here's a mon that is designed from the ground up for that premise.