What we can learn from Dawn’s Pokémon starter tier list
While there are countless Drag Queens inspired by Pokémon, few performers have sculpted their careers around this franchise like RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni, Dawn.
Her passion for the series shows even in her name; the New York-based performer titled herself after one of the leads in the Diamond and Pearl games. Beyond just her love for the franchise, though, the trademark style that has made Dawn one of the most popular queens today is directly influenced by the game’s bombastic visuals.
She crafts herself into high-fashion, alluringly odd monsters like the titular creatures in Pokémon. And whether it be this style, her many hours playing these games on her YouTube, or the fact that she’s one of the proud co-hosts of the 2026 Gayming Awards, it’s clear that Dawn’s dedication to the Pokémon IP makes her particularly adept at speaking about the series today.
But as her trending YouTube video, A Comprehensive Tier List and Analysis of Every Pokémon Starter Through 2026 shows, that doesn’t mean she can’t have some very, very strong opinions. And it’s fair to say the fandom has shared their thoughts in reply! But, Dawn speaks the truth and her ranking opens up deeper discourse around how modern Pokémon has moved away from its roots.
Each trio of starters comes to define the Pokémon games they come from. The first pocket monsters that the player gets to meet and bond with, Dawn begins her video with a deep appreciation for each one of these introductory creatures — before vowing to brutally rank the designs of them and their many evolutions. And she certainly delivers on that promise; within the video’s first few minutes many viewers are sure to gasp at her placing fan-favorites Blastoise and Venasur in the ‘Huh? Sure, ok’ tier (a truly scathing placement). These are just the first of many suspect choices Dawn will make, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have some very astute observations as well!
Particularly in how she cites that at a certain point each trio had at least one hyper-feminine ‘diva’ option, Dawn personal opinions grow into a deep look at how these designs have morphed over the years. It’s through this that she begins to notice a strange trend in the starters’ visuals. Namely how, with each generation, GameFreak begins to shed the complex animalism of early pokémon and instead layer these visuals with strangely humanoid aspects (even giving some of them jobs!). It’s a questionable aspect of the modern games that Dawn clocks early into her video, and it highlights one of the biggest issues with this series today: Pokémon no longer trusts its players.
The appearance of early starters followed a similar progression: they begin as cute, mystical versions of some real-world animal, evolve into an awkward middle phase, and eventually becoming titanic creatures that merge the original design with some jaw-dropping superpower. These final evolutions often incorporated some aspect of humanity — Blastoise literally has two giant cannons holstered to his shell — but were still irrevocably primal. Powerful, inhumanly beautiful beasts of this colorful world. It’s these that led many fans to first fall in love with the series, and it’s why so many have grown disappointed with how utterly human modern designs have become.
Dawn uses Incineroar to exemplify her (expletive-filled) takedown of this trend; what starts as a fiery kitten grows into a hulking, bipedal wrestling tiger, with its feline attributes taking a backseat to the bulky male figure this final evolution tries to embody. And Incineroar isn’t the only one, with both the Meowscarada and Delphox evolution lines showing cute, quadriped beasts grow into distinctly humanoid figures. These designs occurred alongside changes that made the games markedly easier for players, like the fact that there really aren’t many surprise battles anymore or that trainers are now informed in battle what moves are best to use. On their own, each of these elements could indicate a simple shift in direction for this series. But together, they signify a lack of faith from the games’ creators — a distrust in their players’ ability to connect with a story that doesn’t directly relate to them.
What made early Pokémon so magical was how these projects merged the mundane with the truly wondrous. These worlds reflected reality in many ways, but were colored by the astonishing creatures at their center, with players finding the human aspects accessible while being pushed to forge empathy with beings they could never remotely encounter in real life. That commitment was the bedrock of this franchise, but by making pokémon appear more humanoid and ascribing them civilized jobs and interests, the franchise is attempting to manufacture a bond that once came so easily between player and creature.
It chips away at the chance for natural empathy, at the ability for players to see something inherently monstrous and viewing the humanity within its inhuman appearance. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every pokémon; each generation luckily still has some wild concepts in their lineups. But by making this a more prominent trend within the starters — trios who are meant to epitomize each game — this franchise shows that it doesn’t trust modern players to forge heartfelt commitments to things that aren’t relatable in some way.
While Dawn may not have been attempting an in-depth analysis of Pokémon’s visual style, her video highlights how this series no longer seems content to let players bond with these captured critters on thier own. With these distinctly humanoid designs, the creators show a reliance on recognizable traits rather than empathic storytelling, taking away from the jaw-dropping wonder that made this series so immersive. And when this is paired with a removal of the gameplay hurdles that made players try harder to truly be the very best, they strip away the need for an earnest gameplay style conducive to the immense love early players had for the pokémon in their party.
Because the strongest bonds are forged in adversity. And by not pushing players to find empathy for monsters that they could never relate to while making the entire gameplay experience easier, Pokémon is not only removing the instilled empathy that makes its concept so heartwarming, but breaking down the formula that made it such a historic franchise in the first place.
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