Everyone wishes Pokemon were real. To help deceive myself, if only just a little bit, I have a little Gengar plush that I sit on the sofa with. While watching trash TV, holding Gengar close to my stomach or propped under my arm is a nice comfort. While I don't take the plush to bed - it’s too small and I move around in my sleep too much - it got me thinking: which Pokemon would be the best to take to bed? You know, for sleeping. Not the other stuff.
Gengar is out immediately. While the plush is made of fabric and stuffing, the real Gengar is a poisonous ghost - not the ideal bedfellow. In fact, all Poison types and Ghost types are out. Steel, too. Actually, let's go ahead and take out Rock (clearly going to be uncomfortable), Ground (too gritty), Fire (health and safety), and Bug (ew) as well. Oh, Water's out too. I know some of you think Vaporeon is the ideal Pokemon to take to bed in the other way, but I don't want a Pokemon that will wet the bed.
It goes without saying that humanoid Pokemon are out, or any that are deemed sexy. This isn't a joke post that ends with me, Machoke, Goodra, and Gardevoir as bed buddies in the latest episode of ‘the writer's barely disguised fetish.’ I'm deadly serious. I want a Pokemon to cuddle in the same way I cuddle Geng.
I'm going to take cat- and dog-based Pokemon out of the running too. I'm sure they'd be warm and snug, but since many pet owners already have their cats or dogs sleep on their bed, it would be a waste of the magic of Pokemon to just pick Furfrou. Pikachu is out too - we're not that basic.
This leaves Normal, Grass, Electric, Ice, Fighting, Flying, Psychic, Dark, Dragon, and Fairy 'mons in the running, so long as they're not humanoid, sexy, cats, dogs, or Pikachu. Looking at that list of types though, I'm not sure Ice would be very good for snuggling up to, and Electric is as big a hazard as Fire, so they're both out. I hate birds, so Flying makes its exit, and basically all the Fighting Pokemon are humanoid, ugly, or both, so let's cut the remaining few of them too. Normal, Grass, Psychic, Dark, Dragon, and Fairy remain. Things are starting to get interesting, unless you've already clicked away upon learning this wasn't just Trainer x Goodra fanfiction, in which case things have already become very boring for you.
I've narrowed it down to one Pokemon per category. Normal's pick is Minccino, Grass has Shaymin, and Psychic has Galarian Ponyta. Dark Pokemon are represented by Zorua (it's a fox, not a dog), while I'm breaking the 'no Fighting, they're ugly' rule to have Jangmo-o as Dragon's cuddle champion. Fairy, easily the most stacked type here, already has Galarian Ponyta, and had it been around for Shaymin's introduction, probably would have had that too. It comes down to Clefable and Slurpuff, but that's its undoing.
Obviously, I choose Slurpuff. I'm a sucker for sugar. If I picked Clefable, I'd always know I should have picked Slurpuff. But I also don't want to sleep next to a sticky cupcake, so in a shock twist, Fairy is out. Well, not really - Galarian Ponyta is there. Still though, what an upset in this contest I just made up.
Minccino seems boring next to all of the others, so it's out, and Zorua does too. See ya. Galarian Ponyta, while cute, is probably a little bit too big, which brings it down to Shaymin and Jangmo-o. This is where Gengar comes in. The winner needs to accurately represent the Gengar plush, with the real Gengar being both poisonous and not made of earthly matter and therefore unable to stand in itself. Jangmo-o isn't quite the right shape, and has rough, scaly skin, making Shaymin definitively the best Pokemon to go to bed with - but not like that.